I shared earlier a bunch of new MyGiftCardsPlus deals which had a twist. Rather than being available on the standard MyGiftCardsPlus site, the deals were launched in conjunction with Upromise. In order to get access to the deals, you had to link your MyGiftCardsPlus account with Upromise.
Here are a few things I wanted to highlight and comment on about this new partnership.
Ownership
In the past, when buying gift cards from MyGiftCardsPlus you earned cashback in the form of Swagbucks. Swagbucks can be cashed out via PayPal and so it’s always been regarded as good as cash.
Although I wasn’t expecting the MyGiftCardsPlus/Upromise partnership, I suppose it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because Swagbucks, Upromise and MyGiftCardsPlus are all owned by the same company – Prodege.
What Is Upromise?
In case you’re not familiar with Upromise, it’s a company which aims to help people save up for college. They previously seemed to have three main points of focus:
They used to be owned by Sallie Mae, but Prodege bought them in 2020.
Although their purpose is to help people save for college, any earnings from the shopping portal, credit card or dining program can be cashed out to your bank account – your earnings don’t have to be transferred to a 529 account or anything like that.
Why The Upromise Partnership Makes Sense
This MyGiftCardsPlus/Upromise partnership makes a lot of sense to me. If people come across MyGiftCardsPlus for the first time, getting rewarded for buying gift cards might seem appealing. However, if they then see that they earn something called “Swagbucks”, that might be a little more off-putting if they’re not familiar with Swagbucks.
Even though Swagbucks is a long-established company and the Swagbucks you earn can be redeemed via PayPal on a 1:1 basis, the company’s name doesn’t really engender trust (when I think “swag” I picture a bank robber with that written on his bag full of money!). It’s also not clear upon first glance for new customers how much Swagbucks are worth and I’m sure some people are put off by the prospect of learning how Swagbucks can be used.
By also partnering with Upromise and offering what’s more clearly cashback it’s a win-win. People who want to continue with the MyGiftCardsPlus/Swagbucks partnership can continue to do so, but the Upromise partnership will hopefully (for Prodege) increase the number of people buying gift cards from them.
Why Swagbucks Is (Probably) Better Than Upromise
In order to gain access to the MyGiftCardsPlus/Upromise deals, you have to link your two accounts which presumably means you’ll no longer earn Swagbucks if that’s how your account is currently set up.
This means you have to make a choice – which option should you go for? Earn straight cashback via Upromise or earn Swagbucks? In one way it doesn’t matter as they’re both as good as cash, but there are a couple of important factors to consider.
1) Deals
To launch the MyGiftCardsPlus/Upromise offering, they released some decent gift card deals which weren’t available to people with a MyGiftCardsPlus/Swagbucks account. Seeing as the Upromise partnership is so new, it’s not clear yet if future MyGiftCardsPlus deals will be exactly the same for both types of customer or if Upromise members will get one set of deals and Swagbucks members will get a different set.
I suspect future deals will just fall under one generic MyGiftCardsPlus header and it’s simply the backend method of earning your cashback which will be slightly different. That’s just speculation though – I don’t have any kind of insider information.
2) Redeeming Earnings
All else being equal, I think it’d be best to earn Swagbucks rather than cashback with Upromise. That’s because $100 of earnings with Upromise is only ever going to be worth $100.
Swagbucks on the other hand sometimes offers discounts on gift cards. For example, at the time of writing this they’re offering 15% off $10 & $50 Apple gift cards, in the past they’ve offered 10% off Home Depot gift cards, etc. You could therefore take that same $100 “cashback” with Swagbucks and redeem $85 of it for $100 worth of Apple gift cards and cash the remaining $15 out via PayPal. That’s $115 of value versus only $100 with Upromise.
Your Thoughts?
What are your thoughts on this partnership? Is there some other angle to the Upromise side of things that I’m missing which would make it preferable to link your Upromise and MyGiftCardsPlus account, or are you planning on leaving things as they are and keep earning Swagbucks when buying gift cards from MyGiftCardsPlus? Let us know in the comments below.
The big downside to upromise is how looooong it takes for cashback to post and be available to withdraw. Swagbucks is fast. Maybe they will fix this?
I hope so. I imagine for MyGiftCardsPlus deals that the cashback will post to your account straight away seeing as they don’t have to wait for affiliate networks like their shopping portal does.
Looks like there are several other portal options too – Mypoints, Shopathome, and Inboxdollars. Very curious to see what comes of this.
Good point – it’ll be interesting to see if Prodege’s other portals follow suit or if Upromise is regarded as a different prospect for some reason.
I see what you mean – I just thought you meant that Prodege owns all those portals and brands, but I just saw in my account that they’re all options for earning with MyGiftCardsPlus.
Upromise takes much longer. Swagbucks can be redeemed for discount gift cards (like 15% off Apple), making a lot of deal money maker. I think they’re the same, whichever has better deal I’ll go with that partnership.
Yep, it’ll be interesting to see if they continually offer different deals based on the partnership.
upromise states that the reward will be transferred to your account (I choose checking account) on the first week each month automatically. Not that bad.
This could certainly be a good option for people who just want the money to be deposited automatically or who are actually saving for college and don’t want to take the extra steps of redeeming Swagbucks.