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Rakuten’s Black Friday offers are now live and the portal is offering at least 12% cash back or 12 Amex Membership Rewards Points per dollar spent at over 700 stores (some stores are offering more). This promotion will run through 29 November (Cyber Monday) so with the stores included in this promotion also offering their own Black Friday deals and with Rakuten currently offering its best-ever referral bonus, this is a great time to stack savings and to snap up some bargains.
If your favorite retailer isn’t currently offering a deal as good as 12% back, don’t worry as there’s a chance the cash back that it’s offering may improve over the Black Friday weekend or on Cyber Monday. If, on the other hand, your favorite retailer is offering a 12% rebate (or better) today, it may be a good idea to do your shopping sooner rather than later as it may drop out of this deal over the next few days.
Today, among the participating retailers offering 12% cash back (or more) are the following*:
- Adidas (15%)
- Best Western
- Bloomingdales
- BooHoo
- Caesars Rewards
- Dell
- Disney (15%)
- Finish Line
- Foot Locker
- Gap
- Harrods
- Harvey Nichols (15%)
- Hugo Boss (15%)
- Neiman Marcus (up to 15%)
- Nike
- Oakley
- Overstock
- Ray-Ban
- Saks 5th Av (15%)
- Saks OFF 5th (16%)
- Samsung (up to 15%)
*The list of participating retailers is subject to change
Related Reading: How to elect to earn Membership Rewards Points through Rakuten
Get an easy $40 or 4,000 points through a referral
Through 7 December, Rakuten is offering the best bonus we have ever seen it offering to two groups of people – new users and existing users who refer friends to Rakuten.
The program and the current promotion couldn’t be simpler:
- Refer friends to Rakuten (link)
- Only new members are eligible for the Referral Sign Up Bonus.
- Qualify for a $40 Referral Sign Up Bonus when you:
- sign up to become a new member using your referrer’s referral link or other method supplied by Rakuten by 11:59 PM ET on 7 December 2021, and
- make one or more purchases totaling at least $40 within 90 days of signing up.
- One Referral Sign up Bonus per eligible new member.
- You and your referrer must reside and be located in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, or Canada and comply with the Refer-A-Friend Program Terms.
- Referral Sign Up Bonus will be added to your next Cash Back payment, provided that you are a Qualified Referral according to the Refer-A-Friend Program Terms.
Full terms and conditions are on the Rakuten site
Tips
There’s no trick to getting the cash back or Membership Rewards points (you just click through to the retailers using the links on Rakuten), but there are two things you should keep in mind:
Firstly, before making any purchases, make sure you check what Amex offers are available in your American Express account – a number of retailers participating in the Rakuten promotion also frequently appear among the Amex offers I’ve been seeing this year (e.g. Dell, Oakley, etc…). Load your Amex card with any relevant offers and then use that card to pay when you’ve clicked through to the retailer(s) and finished your shopping.
Secondly, if you don’t have any relevant Amex offers to use, make sure you use a credit card that will reward you well. Most miles and points credit cards will only offer 1 point or mile per dollar at a lot of the participating retailers so this would be a good opportunity to use a good cash back card like the refreshed Chase Freedom Unlimited Card (1.5% cash back on all elgible spending) or the Blue Cash EveryDay® Card (2% cash back at select department stores) or to use a card on which you’re currently working towards a strong welcome offer (like this one).
Most importantly, don’t forget that the 12% cash back deal is only available through 29 November and that if you’re new to Rakuten, you can sign up using this referral link and earn a bonus of $40 cash back or 4,000 Membership Rewards Points (on top of any other cash back/points you may earn).
