When covering the launch of Bitmo’s new Perk Points program last month, I missed something pretty interesting which reader SA brought to my attention.
As part of Perk Points, Bitmo is now offering a card-linked program which rewards you for both in-store and online purchases at seemingly every company whose gift card brand is available in the app.
To participate in this program, you need to link your credit and/or debit cards in the app. To do that, tap the ‘Profile’ tab at the bottom of the app, then ‘Linked Accounts’ and ‘Add credit or debit card’. Bitmo uses Plaid to link your accounts, so you’re not actually providing Bitmo with your login details.
Unfortunately it seems like you’re limited to linking one card per bank which is pretty inconvenient. Some card-linked apps which use Plaid allow you to bulk-add all your cards in one go. Bitmo on the other hand only lets you select one card per bank, even if you have separate logins. For example, my personal Chase cards have a separate login to my Chase business cards. After linking one personal Chase card, I tried adding a Chase business card but it wouldn’t let me due to having already linked that personal card. Being able to only link one card per bank therefore greatly limits the usefulness of Bitmo’s card-linked feature.
Once you’ve linked your card(s), you’ll earn 1x Perk Point per dollar spent in-store and online automatically – it doesn’t look like you need to activate offers beyond linking your payment card(s) in the first place. That isn’t incredibly rewarding seeing as an earning rate of 1x Perk Point is worth 0.1%.
That’s therefore not going to have a huge impact on how many points you earn unless you spend significant amounts online and in-store at eligible retailers. For example, spending $100 in-store somewhere will earn you 100 points which is worth $0.10. Still, it’s a nice little bonus that you’ll earn without needing to think about it.
What’s unclear is which tracking network Bitmo is using for these card-linked offers. Just yesterday I published a new resource on Frequent Miler listing all the card-linked programs and which network they run on, so I need to add Bitmo to that. The problem is that I can’t find any kind of reference to Figg/Empyr, RCLON, Collinson, etc. in the Bitmo app or on their website. Their Terms and Conditions/Privacy Policy hasn’t been updated for a couple of years, so that’s no help either.
Knowing that tracking network could be important because it could affect your earnings in other programs. For example, let’s say Bitmo uses RCLON (Rakuten Card Linked Offer Network). Linking your card(s) in Bitmo would likely prevent you from being able to earn cashback or rewards from another app or site which uses RCLON like Rakuten’s own in-store offers, Google Pay, etc. Rewards from those programs are always worth at least 1% (if not far more), so going for 0.1% from Bitmo would be a poor option.
If anyone happens to have any insider information as to how this aspect of the Bitmo Perk Points program gets tracked, I’d love to hear from you.
h/t SA