Rakuten, the free online shopping portal, is running its most generous new-member offer yet: join through a qualifying referral link, spend $50 at any partner retailer within 90 days, and both you and the person who referred you get $50 each. The deal runs through September 30, 2026, and beats the previous high-water mark of $40.
For the uninitiated: shopping portals pay you a kickback for purchases you were going to make anyway. Click from Rakuten through to one of its 3,500-plus partner retailers — think Target, Nike, Lowe's — and Rakuten collects a commission from the store, then shares it with you as cash back or points. You pay the same price as going direct, so it's essentially free money. A browser extension can nudge you whenever a store offers extra rewards.
Hitting the $50 spend is trivially easy. If you don't need anything right now, buying a $50 gift card through giftcards.com via Rakuten does the job. Just check for exclusions on specific product categories before checkout.
Here's where it gets interesting for travellers: Rakuten rewards can be converted into Amex Membership Rewards points or Bilt Rewards points instead of cash. With an eligible Amex card, you earn one Membership Rewards point per cent of cash back — so a 10% cash-back offer becomes 10x points. The welcome bonus itself is cash-only, but everything after that qualifies. Bilt works too: elite members get one point per cent, everyone else one point per two cents, and Bilt cash back can be converted retroactively for the whole quarterly payout period — including the referral bonus. Since both point currencies are commonly valued around 1.7 cents each thanks to premium cabin redemptions, taking points instead of cash effectively boosts your haul by 70%.
Payouts arrive quarterly: activity from January through March pays on May 15, and so on through the year (October–December activity pays the following February 15).
To squeeze out more, pair Rakuten with the right credit card. Rakuten's own co-branded Amex earns 4% back on portal purchases up to $10,000 a year; otherwise a solid everyday card like the Citi Double Cash or Capital One Venture is a sensible pick. Also stack card statement credits (Dell, lululemon and the like still trigger them when you shop via Rakuten) and watch for Amex Offers or Chase Offers, which can often be combined with portal earnings.
Once you're in, the referral loop continues — send your own link to friends via the "Refer & Earn" button and collect $50 per qualified signup, with no cap. And a quick comparison tip: sites like Cashback Monitor let you check whether Rakuten actually has the best rate for a given retailer, since rival portals sometimes pay more.
Who's this for? Anyone who shops online — but especially points collectors who put value on business and first class redemptions, where converting this bonus into Amex or Bilt points multiplies what a flat $50 is worth. It costs nothing to join, so the main risk is simply forgetting to click through the portal.
