Rakuten Black Friday Promo
There is a pair of Rakuten promotions that could net you $40 / 4,000 points and 15X earning on Black Friday. One is available only to new members, while the other is available to everyone. Here are the details on these two promotions.
Introduction to Rakuten
Formerly eBates, Rakuten is an online shopping portal. We ALWAYS recommend using a shopping portal online. A few extra clicks can net you cash back or extra points for something you’re purchasing anyway. You should never earn just 1X when shopping online.
Unlike other shopping portals, which award their own brand of points or offer cash back, Rakuten allows you to earn American Express Membership Rewards. Instead of 1 cent, you get 1 Membership Rewards point. If you want to change your settings to earn points instead of cash back, here’s how. Assuming you value MR points at more than 1 cent (we sure do!), you’re already coming out ahead by doing this.
Rakuten New Member Bonus
Rakuten offers new member bonuses regularly. That’s not special. However, the bonus is…meh.
Typically, you get a $10 welcome bonus (or 10,000 points) after spending $25 through their shopping portal in the first 90 days.
However, with a referral link from a friend, you can do much better.
If you sign up with a referral link, the bonus jumps to $40 for you and for the person who referred you. To get the bonus, you need to spend $40 through the portal within 90 days of joining. You can sign up through our referral here.
Rakuten Black Friday to Cyber Monday Deals
Now that you have an account, you’re ready to shop through Rakuten. What better way to complete your $40 of new member spending than to do it with elevated return rates? Yes, you can stack these.
From Thanksgiving through Black Friday and ending on Cyber Monday, Rakuten will offer 15% cash back / 15X points earning on over 700 brands. That rate of return is not common–especially on this many brands at once.
All categories of shopping and products will be included, such as brands like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Michaels, Walgreens, GameStop, LEGO, Backcountry.com, Eagle Creek, The North Face, Samsonite, Nike, Adidas, Converse, Godiva, Harry & David, Verizon, Dell, Kiehl’s, Samsung, shopDisney, The Body Shop, ULTA, Things Remembered & hundreds more.
This deal runs November 25-29, 2021.
Final Thoughts
If you don’t have a Rakuten account, now is a great time to sign up. Those who already have accounts should get excited for the 15% cash back / 15X points earning on a ton of stores during the weekend including Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
 Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.