Airtime Rewards review

Get cashback at shops like Primark and Argos to bring down your phone bill

Airtime Rewards is a cashback app that can help you cut down the cost of your mobile phone bill. Essentially, you just connect your cards to it and earn cashback on your spending. This can then be taken off your mobile phone bill. Here’s how it works and how much you can earn with Airtime Rewards.

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What is Airtime Rewards?

Airtime Rewards is an app you download to your phone that you connect to your bank cards. Every time you use your connected card at participating retailers — found within the app — you’ll earn some money back that’ll go towards your phone bill. 

For example, if you use your connected card at Oasis to buy a £30 shirt you’ll make the transaction as usual. You don’t have to follow a specific link or scan a code at the till.

Airtime Rewards will automatically track the transaction and calculate how much cashback you’re owed – in this example and at the time of writing, that’d be 3%, which means you’d earn 90p in cashback.

This all goes into the “Rewards” section in the app, then when you have £10, you can get it knocked off your phone bill.

How does Airtime Rewards work?

You can earn cashback in two different ways: from your connected cards and by buying gift cards. Here’s how each of them works.

Connected cards

As long as you’ve connected your card to Airtime Rewards, it’ll track your spending and automatically apply cashback to your account. You may see some transactions as “pending” for a while – this is normal, and it’ll be in your account in the period specified. It’s just to allow for things like refunds.

Buying gift cards

You can also earn cashback by buying gift cards through the app. This can be a little difficult to find, but if you go to “More”, you’ll see a link under the title “More ways to earn”. Here, you’ll see the option “Buy gift cards”.

Here you’ll be able to see a list of retailers available to buy gift cards from. It seems that the general reward available is 4% across the board, and we’ve not seen any fluctuation from this yet.

To purchase a gift card, you choose the one you want and the amount you want and pay with a credit or debit card or using Apple or Google Pay. The gift card will be emailed to you and can be used immediately. The card you use needs to be registered with your account, so it can be tracked in the usual way.

This is similar to what JamDoughnut offers. You get cashback in your Airtime Rewards account a few days after making the purchase.

How much can you earn with Airtime Rewards?

The rates vary by retailer. Some offer just 1%, while others offer as much as 15%. The average is about 3-4%. There are plenty of retailers that you might use often, such as Argos and Waitrose, so you can pick up a lot of cashback from regular spending.

On average, I can cash out £10 every few months.

What cards can you add to Airtime Rewards?

The cards can be a debit or credit card, but only Mastercard or Visa. Sadly, American Express won’t work. 

In addition, it’s best that you don’t use Curve as this can break the link between the retailer and Airtime Rewards needed to make it track.

You add a card in the app, either by using the camera icon in the top right corner of the app to scan your card, or by typing in your card number and expiry date. 

It can take 24 hours for cards to be approved, so it’s worth getting as many of your cards on the app as soon as you get it. You need to have the card active before making a transaction for it to track.

What mobiles networks can you use with Airtime Rewards?

Sadly you can’t use Airtime Rewards with every network, and some are Pay As You Go (PAYG) only. At the time of writing it works with the following:

• EE
• Giffgaff
• O2
• Three
• Vodafone
• Lebara Mobile (PAYG only)
• Lycamobile (PAYG only)
• Now Mobile (PAYG)

If you aren’t with one of these networks you won’t be able to sign up just yet.

If you switch networks, you can still collect the rewards and then either save them up for if you switch networks or gift them to someone else to put towards their mobile bill.

How do you redeem Airtime Rewards?

It’s very easy to redeem your rewards. You hit the rewards tab on the app (the little piggy bank), select the amount and hit redeem. The money will be sent to your phone network and knocked off your bill. This should take just 24 hours, however it can sometimes take longer.

You need to have earned at least £10 to activate your reward, and you can only redeem £20 at a time. You can repeat the process to get more, though.

How much you need to spend to get £10 with Airtime Rewards?

A typical rate is 3-4%, however some of the bigger brands are less than this. With an average of, say 3.5%, you’d need to spend just under £300 to get your first £10. 

To boost your initial rewards, you can check out the sign-up bonus on our Airtime Rewards promo codes page. You can usually get £1.50 credit, and there are frequent bonus offers available.

Gifting your rewards

If you’re feeling generous, you can send reward credit to another user registered with the app. That means that if you happen to have more than you need or aren’t on a participating network you can gift £10 to £50.

What retailers are on Airtime Rewards?

The big names are Argos, Waitrose, Boots and Primark, but there are dozens more you’ll know.

There are new retailers added all the time and if you sign up for emails you’ll be told when this happens. It sadly won’t let you know if one leaves the app.

Some shops let you earn the money back both online and in-store while others restrict you to just one. You might need to use the card itself and not Apple Pay or Google Pay in some cases. This information is all on the app, along with the current cashback rate.

Here are some of the retailers available to earn from via your connected cards. A lot of the same retailers are available to buy gift cards from, too.

Fashion	Food, Drink & Entertainment
Clarks Crew Clothing New Look Oasis Primark Superdry Urban Outfitters Warehouse	Amazon Fresh Deliveroo Greggs Krispy Kreme Laithwaite’s Wine Prezzo Thorntons Waitrose
Home & Technology	Health & Beauty
Argos IKEA John Lewis NOW Broadband Waterstones	Boots GHD Kiehl’s L’Occitane Sephora
Travel	Motoring
Apex Hotel Inspire Travel Megabus P&O	Euro Car Parts Click Mechanic Halfords Halfords Autocentre

How to stack Airtime Rewards with other offers

If your bank or credit card has a reward programme which offers extra cashback at participating retailers, then you should be able to get both those rewards.

You can take it a step further and connect your card to other cashback apps, like Cheddar. And, if the Airtime Rewards retailer allows online purchases then you could shop via a cashback site like Quidco or TopCashback and earn another set of cashback. Some people say that they have issues using Chase with Airtime Rewards due to its virtual cards, but it tends to work for online purchases.

Is Airtime Rewards any good?

If you pay some attention to which retailers are on the app, and what the rates are, then you can do pretty well from Airtime Rewards. You can also double (or even triple) this up with other cashback, such as the cashback offered by Chase, and by connecting your account to Cheddar, too. I did this recently, earning 3% from Decathlon from Airtime Rewards and another 7% with Cheddar, getting a total of 10% back on my spending. I could’ve improved this using Chase. Unfortunately, you can’t use Airtime Rewards with American Express.

With this in mind, there’s the potential to earn some decent cashback with Airtime Rewards, especially if you don’t use an Amex. If you do, then you’ll need to keep an eye on the retailers on the app. It’s worth doing this anyway as some of the shops do come and go.