Update: Mea culpa.
I wrote the below post earlier after Bitmo had just launched their Perk Points feature for BitmoPerks members. The images explaining the new program made it seem terrible as it said you’d earn 1 point per dollar spent, but that each point was only worth 0.1cpp.
While that’s true, there’s an element to the program which I’d missed or, more accurately, hadn’t realized had started yet and means that their new rewards program is much better than I thought it was. Bitmo had announced that they’d be offering bonus points on certain brands, so I figured that was something coming at some point in the future and would only be applicable for perhaps a handful of brands at a time.
It turns out that feature is already available in the app. When scrolling through the list of gift card brands available in the app just now, I noticed that nearly all of them have a high multiple of Perk Points that you’ll earn.
To work out the return for each brand, you just need to insert a decimal point one place to the left. For example, they’re offering 25x Perk Points per dollar on Gamestop gift cards which means that’s a 2.5% return. While that’s not stellar, it’s significantly better than the 0.1% I thought they were offering and is much more in keeping with other sites and apps that reward you when buying gift cards like Fluz, MPX, Rakuten, Slide, etc.
There’s even some very good value to be had here. Most notably, Home Depot is currently listed at 75x which is 7.5% cashback. That’s a very good return for an everyday rate seeing as their gift cards don’t go on sale very often. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s an introductory rate, so if Home Depot gift cards are of interest to you for personal use or reselling, it might be best to stock up on them now. Another update: Reader SA noticed that even though it says 75x for Home Depot, when clicking on its listing it says 25x. There’s a good chance that the 75x on the main listing is a typo and that 25x is the correct rate for Home Depot, so be aware of that before buying.
Other than Home Depot, most brands seem to be in the 25x-55x (2.5%-5.5%) range. It’ll often be possible to get better discounts elsewhere, but this does mean that Bitmo will be worth checking any time you want to buy gift cards for personal use just in case they’re offering the best return.
One other thing I neglected to mention earlier is that in order to see this new feature, you’ll likely need to update the app in the Play Store or the App Store depending on what phone you have.
My original post is below, but please ignore the parts where I was scathing about how non-rewarding their new program is because that was my error!
Original post
Bitmo has launched a new feature of its BitmoPerks program called Perk Points, but they probably shouldn’t have bothered. When buying gift cards in the app, you’ll earn 1 Perk Point per dollar spent. The minimum redemption is 5,000 points for a $5 gift card which means that you have to spend $5,000 on gift cards to earn enough points for a free $5 gift card. That means their “rewards” only give a 0.1% return.
In theory, that’s better than in the past because outside of certain promotions on specific gift card brands, Bitmo didn’t give any kind of incentive for buying gift cards from them. However, 0.1% cashback which can only be redeemed on other gift cards in the app is a laughable feature. The Slide app from Raise offers a flat 4% or 5% cashback rate, Fluz offers significantly more than 0.1% cashback, Rakuten offers cashback/Membership Rewards, United’s MPX app offers better returns in the form of MileagePlus miles, CrayPay is also more generous, etc.
Bitmo is giving all BitmoPerks members 4,500 points to get started, but note that that’s below the minimum 5,000 point redemption level for a $5 gift card. In order to earn the 500 points needed to get to that minimum redemption level, you’d need to spend $500 on gift cards.
This is an incredibly disappointing update. They’d teased changes coming in 2021 which included rewards when buying gift cards in the app. If 0.1% cashback is the best they can do, there’s still absolutely no reason to use their app to buy gift cards other than when they offer promo codes discounting certain brands.
It might not be quite as terrible as it currently appears. They’re listing the following features for BitmoPerks members:
- Exclusive offers and discounts to top brands
- Special bonus point offers on gift cards
- Free gifts sent to your wallet from your favorite brands
The first bullet point is already what they offer, so it’s good to see that it seems like they’ll be maintaining those promotions. The second bullet point mentions bonus point offers, but they’d need to offer at least 50 points per dollar (i.e. 5% cashback) in order to give any semblance of a reason to buy gift cards from them. The third bullet is something they already do at times, so that doesn’t appear to be new either.
When putting together my gift card predictions for 2021, I’d considered mentioning Bitmo in my third prediction as a potential gift card site or app which would close down this year. I ended up not mentioning them seeing as they’d indicated they’d be bringing in a rewards program which I figured might make it more competitive versus the other gift card-selling sites and apps listed above. If this is the extent of the additional incentive they’ll give us to use their app, it’s hard to see them gaining and retaining users outside of the good sales they occasionally run.
They did a bait & switch with the cards available when redeeming points. It showed DoorDash as an option for redeeming points, so I bought a GC to get my points up to 5000, to redeem for $5 DoorDash. But then it shows DoorDash as “unavailable in selected amount” (regardless of whether I select 5,000 or 20,000 all the way up to 100,000). Same for Uber Eats and some others. (Some like CVS are still available.)
That’s good to know. I know you can normally only buy certain brands in $5 denominations, but wasn’t sure if that would also be the case when redeeming points for gift cards – looks like it is.