Raise recently announced that they’ll be rebranding the Slide app as Raise. I’ve already covered that announcement here, but they’ve now sent out further details about the changes and it’s not pretty.
As a recap of what we already knew, Slide will be rebranded as Raise and will be known as the Raise app, with the existing Raise app being known as Raise Marketplace. Yes, the same company called Raise will have two apps which both have Raise in their name which will both sell gift cards.
That’s not the bad part though.
No 1% Bonus For Prefunding
There are two big negatives that Raise/Slide have announced. One is that they’re not going to offer 1% bonus cashback when prefunding your account after November 13, 2023. That’s a shame as that was an easy way to boost your earnings with very little additional effort.
No More Cashback – Raise Cash Instead
The even bigger negative is that you’ll no longer earn proper cashback. In the past, the percentage that you earned when buying gift cards in the app could be cashed out as actual cash by sending it to your PayPal or Venmo account. From November 14, you’ll no longer earn regular cashback. Instead, you’ll earn Raise Cash which can only be redeemed in the (rebranded from Slide) Raise app. That’s a big devaluation of the program compared to how Slide had worked in the past and it’ll likely mean that I use Slide Raise far less in the future as my money will be locked in there.
I can certainly understand why they’re doing that from a business perspective as it means you’ll be locked into their ecosystem, thereby ensuring you continue buying gift cards from them. However, for me – and I imagine at least some number of other users – it’ll have the opposite effect as it means we won’t use the app at all (or rarely).
If you don’t redeem your existing cashback by November 13, that’ll automatically get converted to Raise Cash which is also sucky. They’re doing a good job of communicating these changes (I’ve received three emails over the last 24-48 hours), but I imagine I’m an outlier in that I pay attention to emails like that. I suspect there’ll be several occasional Slide users who go to use the app after November 14 to find out they can’t cash out their existing and future cashback earnings.
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Raise has mentioned additional, still-to-be-announced changes, so hopefully those are positive changes rather than the disappointing announcements so far. It’ll apparently be possible to buy 60+ additional brands including Walmart and Home Depot, but it remains to be seen as to whether the cashback rates available on those brands will be worthwhile or not.
It never made sense why Raise would create competition for itself. I moved most of my purchases away from raise back in the good ole days or TCB. Now Slide is a piece of junk.
I gave up on them once Slide disappeared. Loved Slide. Don’t care at all about Raise