Whether shopping online, at the checkout in the supermarket, or even in the restaurant around the corner: Everywhere you can save a little money with little tricks, which can be accumulated to quite a nice sum at the end of the year and used as an additional savings rate for retirement.
The first trick starts with the means of payment: instead of paying with cash or the boring checking card, you should get a payment card with a bonus program that generates cashback in the form of points, miles or even cash for every transaction made.
Payment cards with cashback
The best-known cashback cards are those from American Express*. Here, one Membership Rewards point is usually awarded for every two euros spent on the American Express card. These can then either be exchanged for non-cash rewards or used on trips for flight upgrades, which might allow you to fly business class at the economy price for a small penny. Meanwhile, Membership Rewards points can even be used to pay for card transactions, donated or exchanged for various vouchers. Those who sign up for the paid Rewards Turbo even earn 50% more American Express points.
American Express offers numerous different card products*, some of which come with attractive insurance benefits. With the free Blue Card, however, you only collect Membership Rewards if you optionally sign up for it and pay the membership fee of 30 euros per year. This fee must first be recouped through points. With an annual turnover of at least 9,000 euros via the card, the next higher tier, the Green Card, is therefore the more favorable alternative. This is because participation in the bonus program is already included here, and from this annual turnover the provider waives the annual fee of the regular 60 euros in the following year. In addition, travel insurance in the event of flight or baggage delays and transport accident insurance are included.
The Gold Card costs 12 euros a month* and offers a range of additional insurance services, such as travel cancellation insurance, international travel health insurance, and a Europe-wide motor vehicle cover letter in the event of breakdowns at home or abroad. The Platinum Card* is the absolute top product at American Express. Here, there is personal liability insurance for travel, rental car insurance and numerous statuses for various hotel chains and airlines, where upgrades and preferential treatment are almost guaranteed. At 600 euros a year, however, the metal card is anything but a bargain.
The biggest disadvantage of the American Express cards is their acceptance. They are still not accepted everywhere. However, the cards can be used to pay at large chains such as Aldi, Lidl, Rewe and Norma, as well as at Amazon, without any problems.
Miles and More
Miles and More and DKB also offer an attractive bonus program. Here, you collect one bonus mile for every 2 euros spent on the card, which can then also be exchanged for numerous non-cash rewards, vouchers and upgrades, and free flights. The blue card costs 4.58 euros a month, the gold version with additional insurance benefits 9.16 euros a month. Of course, the card price can be paid via award miles.
The same applies here: the annual fee must first be recouped in order to benefit from the cashback. Unless you are already a Lufthansa customer and regularly travel with the crane. Thanks to the Mastercard label, the acceptance of Miles and More cards is significantly better than that of American Express. You can pay with it almost everywhere where card payments are accepted.
The Amazon credit card
Amazon customers who frequently order from this mail-order company should take a look at its credit card*, because it also has an attractive bonus program that can save them a few euros. For every full two euros spent on the card, 0.5% of the turnover is returned in the form of Amazon points. These can be exchanged directly with the online retailer to make the next goods order cheaper. 100 Amazon points correspond to one euro. Those who use the card directly at Amazon even get 3% back for every full euro of sales, thus saving on Amazon orders in particular.
The card itself is free for Prime customers, while Amazon customers without Prime membership pay an annual fee of 19.99 euros starting in the second card year, which is roughly equivalent to 1.66 euros per month. This makes the Amazon credit card the cheapest of the cashback cards presented in this article so far. It is a Visa card with a credit limit, which means that acceptance is also very good.
Crypto.com Visa Card
On the other hand, for those who don’t want to spend a single cent on a cashback payment card and are open to cryptocurrencies, we recommend the Visa card from Crypto.com*. It pays back a full 1% on every card transaction in CRO tokens, which can then be directly exchanged for other coins or converted into euros. Those willing to invest a few euros can reach for the higher card tiers and drill the cashback up to 8% and get CRO credits for Spotify, Netflix or Amazon Prime on top of that. The stake can be liquidated after six months and the CRO coins can then be sold again – depending on where the price of the cryptocurrency is then.
We had published a detailed article on Crypto.com just recently. The Crypto.com Visa is our main card, along with the Amazon card. Acceptance is also excellent thanks to Visa branding. However, the card needs to be loaded before the transaction. It is a debit card. Nice side effect: Those who load the Crypto card via their Miles and More or Amazon credit card pocket double cashback.
The Payback bonus program
One of the largest cashback programs in Germany is PayBack*. Here, you simply scan your PayBack card at the supermarket checkout and get points credited for your purchase. As with the above-mentioned credit card bonus programs, these can be exchanged for non-cash rewards and vouchers, but with a trick they can also be paid directly into your account. In this case, each PayBack point corresponds to one cent. Points can be collected from numerous partners, including dm, Rewe, Penny, Aral, Burger King, real, Dehner, Sixt, Lufthansa, Thalia and Fressnapf. As a rule, one point is awarded for every two euros spent.
With the help of coupons, the cashback can be increased considerably. There are often triple points with selected partners, and in some cases there are even up to 10 or even 20 points. There are also regular coupons in the app for individual product categories, such as mixed beers, chocolate or organic products, some of which can even be combined. It is therefore always worth taking a look at the app before shopping!
PayBack can of course be combined with the above-mentioned payment cards, which allows you to save even more per purchase.
Shoop.de
Another worthwhile platform is Shoop.de*. Here you can get rich cashback from numerous online partners. The business model is ingenious and helpful at the same time: Shoop.de uses affiliate links to earn commissions as an intermediary for subsequent purchases, but pays out the majority of these to its users. The procedure is very simple: You register on the Shoop platform, search for the online store you want to buy from, go to the affiliate via the Shoop link provided, and then simply make a purchase. There are no additional costs for the customer.
As a rule, there is between 1% and 4% cashback, depending on the provider, including numerous large chains such as Media Markt, Saturn, Otto, Deichmann, Lieferando, Booking.com, LEGO or eBay. In addition, cell phone rates, electricity contracts and much more can be concluded via Shoop.de, sometimes with high cashback rates. From time to time there are interesting promotions. For the World Cup, for example, Lieferando offered a whopping 40% cashback. Pizza and beer taste so much better!
The collected credit can then be transferred directly to the customer’s own checking account via SEPA transfer with a minimum payout amount of just one euro. Alternatively, even PayPal is supported. Shoop.de also offers various value vouchers with some discount, which can be used to save a bit more in some cases. Those who are forgetful and don’t always think about the platform when ordering online can install a browser plugin. Then the cashback can be activated automatically before the order.
If you register via our link*, you will receive 10 euros extra cashback after your first purchase of at least 10 euros, which was made within seven days of registration.
My own experience
This year alone, I’ve collected around 100 euros in cashback via PayBack, another 20 euros from Shoop.de and a few hundred euros via credit cards. Every little bit helps! I pay out the entire cashback at the end of each year and put it into my stock and crypto portfolio, where it can continue to grow in the long term. But a bit of discipline is required: Just because there’s cashback doesn’t mean you get to spend more! For expenses that you would have made anyway, cashback is definitely a worthwhile thing!
