ReceiptPal Review: 5 Things To Know Before Earning Cash Back

ReceiptPal is a free app that allows you to earn cash back by uploading pictures of your receipts after you make purchases.

In this article, I’ll take a close look at five things to know about ReceiptPal before you download the app.

I’ve downloaded ReceiptPal myself, and I’ve compared it to other cash back apps to see what the process is like to help you decide whether or not it’s worth downloading.

This article was updated in September 2023 and I review it every 12 months. Detailed notes on all updates can be found here.

5 Things To Know Before Earning Cash Back With ReceiptPal

Whether you’re shopping in-store, placing an online order or just picking up groceries, there are many ways to make sure you’re always getting the best deals. In addition to price comparing, shopping for sales, using promo codes and/or coupons, cash back apps are a great way to maximize your savings. However, with so many cash back apps available now, it’s hard to tell which are actually worth your time.

If you’ve been searching for cash back apps to help you save, you may have come across ReceiptPal. ReceiptPal is a cash back app that’s available on the App Store and Google Play. Once you download the app, you can start uploading photos of receipts to earn points which you can then redeem for digital gift cards.

Throughout the two weeks that I tested ReceiptPal, I wasn’t able to collect enough points to collect any rewards. However, if you have an eligible email address, you could earn a few digital gift cards with ReceiptPal.

If you’re thinking about downloading ReceiptPal to earn cash back, here are five things to know.

What Is ReceiptPal?

ReceiptPal is a legitimate cash back app that allows you to earn digital gift cards in exchange for uploading pictures of your purchase receipts.

The app was developed in 2013 by The NPD Group, which is a market research company. Since then, it’s established a solid reputation as a legitimate source of earning cash back on purchases. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer the biggest payouts.

However, ReceiptPal does accept nearly any paper receipt from a purchase made in the United States as well as e-receipts from more than 1,000 online retailers. Every receipt gets you the same amount of points, which means you can earn cash back on everything from gas to groceries to dining.

Once you upload four receipts, you’ll receive 100 points. When I tried out ReceiptPal in September 2023, reward redemptions began at 2,200 points for a $5 Amazon gift card and ranged up to 32,250 points for a $100 Amazon gift card.

In September 2023, ReceiptPal had a 4.5-star rating on The App Store from 20.7K reviews. On Google Play, the app had a 4.2-star rating from 35.8K reviews.

Based on these ratings and my own experience and research, I feel it’s safe to say that ReceiptPal is a legitimate cash back app. However, whether or not it’s worth your time depends on how frequently you make purchases.

How Does ReceiptPal Work?

ReceiptPal works like many other cash back apps: After you make a purchase, you upload a picture of your receipt in exchange for points that can later be redeemed for e-gift cards.

You can also connect your email address and various other accounts (like Amazon, Kroger, Walmart, Instacart and others) to earn cash back automatically for online purchases.

For every four receipts you upload to ReceiptPal, you’ll earn 100 points. You can also earn bonus points by doing things like registering and connecting your email and other accounts.

Once you earn a certain amount of points, you’ll be able to redeem them for e-gift cards at Amazon or other retailers. When I tried out ReceiptPal myself, rewards began at 2,200 points for a $5 Amazon e-gift card.

How To Earn Cash Back With ReceiptPal

I downloaded the ReceiptPal app it myself, registered, connected an account and uploaded receipts over the course of two weeks.

To get started, I downloaded the ReceiptPal app to my phone. Then, I opened it and clicked “Register now.” I was prompted to enter my email address, date of birth, gender and ZIP code.

There was an option to connect my email in order to submit e-receipts automatically. Unfortunately, automatic e-receipt submission was not available for either my work or personal email address. According to ReceiptPal’s website, the following email providers are eligible for connection to ReceiptPal: AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo.

If you do connect, ReceiptPal says you’ll get a one-time 500-point bonus, and online receipts will be submitted automatically.

I still had to verify my email address. The confirmation email went to my junk mail folder, so be sure to check there if you sign up for ReceiptPal. Once I had verified my email, I got a 150-point bonus for registering.

When you’re ready to start uploading receipts, you’ll see the earliest eligible date in the “receipts” tab of the app. Receipts are accepted from nearly any U.S. retailer or store as long as they meet the basic requirements, including the store name, purchase date and total amount as well as being readable and printed in English.

To submit a receipt, simply click the camera, and you’ll be able to take multiple photos of your receipt to make sure you’re capturing the entire thing.

Once you’ve uploaded four receipts, you’ll get 100 points for filling up a point card. The number of point cards that you have each week varies, but new members start with five.

In addition to uploading receipts, you can also connect various accounts to earn bonus points (up to 300) and automatically upload e-receipts. When I tried out ReceiptPal, eligible retailers included Amazon, Instacart, Kroger, Starbucks and Walmart.

The “Rewards” tab is where you can redeem your points for e-gift cards once you’ve earned enough.

The requirements to unlock rewards included connecting your email for 30 days and neither of my email addresses were eligible for connection.

I could have created a new email address to connect to ReceiptPal, but I honestly wasn’t optimistic that I’d keep up with ReceiptPal long enough to earn enough points to unlock the smallest reward. You would have to upload 88 receipts to earn 2,200 points in order to get a $5 Amazon e-gift card (without counting potential one-time bonus points for things like linking accounts).

How Does ReceiptPal Compare?

I’ve tested several cash back and money-saving apps over the past few yes including Ibotta, Fetch Rewards, Rakuten and more.

To see how ReceiptPal compares to the rest, I took a closer look at each cash back app’s average cash back range, minimum payout, payout options, process and availability.

Here’s what I found.

	Average Cash Back Range	Minimum Payout	Payout Options	How It Works	Availability
Checkout 51	1%-6% per purchase	$20	Check PayPal Electronic gift cards	Activate offers and upload receipts. Shop directly through the app and pay as normal at checkout.	Thousands of brands; gas, groceries and more
Fetch Rewards	Points instead (around 25 points per receipt)	3,000 points ($3)	Electronic gift cards	Upload receipts. Select brands earn more points.	Any store; featured brands focus on groceries and household essentials.
Ibotta	$0.25-$2 per item	$20	Direct deposit PayPal Electronic gift cards	Activate offers and upload receipts.	More than 300 retail chains, restaurants and more; mainly groceries
Rakuten	1%-6% per purchase	$5 (quarterly payouts)	Check PayPal	Activate offers and shop online through the app. Link your credit or debit card for in-store purchases.	More than 3,500 stores including groceries, travel, dining and more
Slide	2-10% per purchase	$15	PayPal Venmo	Link your payment method to pay with Slide directly.	More than 300 stores including restaurants, retail and more
ReceiptPal	Points instead (around 25 points per receipt)	2,200 points ($5)	Electronic gift cards	Upload paper receipts. Link accounts to earn on digital receipts.	Any U.S. store

Compared to other apps, ReceiptPal doesn’t offer the highest payout. Plus, receipts collect points instead of a percentage or set cash amount per purchase. This can be helpful if you make a lot of small purchases. However, bigger purchases are going to earn more on other cash back apps.

One benefit of ReceiptPal is the fact that it accepts nearly any receipt. The receipt just needs to meet the company’s basic requirements. That means you can earn points on any type of purchase including gas, food, travel, groceries, clothes, electronics and more.

Payout options are limited on ReceiptPal; when I downloaded the app, I only saw options for Amazon e-gift cards and “retail e-gift cards” that are redeemable at select online retailers.

I found the process of using ReceiptPal to be comparatively simple. You don’t have to clip coupons, activate offers, shop through the app, buy certain brands or link any payment methods. Instead, you simply upload proof of a receipt after any purchase.

How To Get the Most Out of ReceiptPal

If you’re still thinking about signing up for ReceiptPal, there are a few things you can do to maximize your earnings and get the most overall out of the cash back app.

After trying out ReceiptPal myself, here are my tips for maximizing your earnings:

Take advantage of bonus points. When you first sign up for RecieptPal, you’ll have several opportunities to earn bonus points. Maximize your earnings by connecting an eligible email when you register. You can also earn 250-300 points for each account you connect. This is a good way to earn a lot of points right away.
Connect your email and other accounts. In addition to earning bonus points when you connect your email and other accounts, ReceiptPal will also start automatically importing linked receipts. This is a great, passive way to earn cash back on your purchases.
Upload paper receipts immediately after purchase. ReceiptPal won’t accept receipts for purchases that were made prior to a certain date. To make sure your receipts are uploaded within the set time frame (and to make it a consistent habit to upload each receipt), ReceiptPal encourages members to submit receipts the day they make the purchase.
Make sure eligible receipts are accepted. If you try to upload an eligible receipt and it isn’t accepted, or if you make an online purchase through a connected account and don’t get credit, be sure to follow up with ReceiptPal. You can resubmit a receipt by clicking on “Account,” “Receipt Log,” and “Invalid Receipts,” in the app. If that doesn’t work, contact customer service by clicking on “Account” and “Help Center” in the app to chat with a representative or by emailing [email protected].
Save your points. If you get in the habit of using ReceiptPal, you’ll earn more by saving your points for a bigger reward. For example, when I tried out ReceiptPal, I could get a $5 gift card for 2,200 points or a $10 gift card for 4,000 points. Note that the latter is a better deal!

In addition to these tips, you can always maximize your earnings by paying with a cash back credit card. If you’re looking to earn cash back specifically for groceries, be sure to also check out these 22 tips for saving as well as these six apps.

Final Thoughts: Pros and Cons

ReceiptPal is a legitimate cash back app that offers e-gift cards in exchange for uploading pictures of your receipts and connecting your email account. When I tested it out myself, I found that it was convenient to use since it didn’t require any planning ahead, but it also offered significantly lower payouts.

Before you download ReceiptPal yourself, here are the major pros and cons to keep in mind.

Pros:

You can submit nearly any receipt. Valid receipts from any U.S. retailer are eligible, so you can earn points on nearly any purchase including gas, groceries, food, household items and more. Plus, you don’t have to plan ahead by claiming offers or clipping coupons.
Automatic credit for linked accounts. You can link your Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Instacart and/or Starbucks accounts to automatically submit receipts.
Bonus points available for new members. When you register and link your accounts, you can earn more than 1,500 initial bonus points. Unfortunately, these bonuses are available only once.

Cons:

Points instead of cash. Instead of earning a percentage of cash back on each purchase, you’ll earn 100 points for every four receipts that can later be redeemed for e-gift cards.
Low payout. Compared to other cash back apps, ReceiptPal doesn’t offer a high payout. Rewards started at 2,200 points for a $5 e-gift card when I tested out the app myself.
Customer service. There is no phone number to contact customer service. Instead, you can chat with a representative in the app or use email. However, when I reached out with an inquiry about connecting my email addresses, the response I received wasn’t really helpful: It seemed like it came from a bot rather than a customer service representative.
Only certain email addresses are eligible. Eligible email addresses include AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo!. Other email addresses aren’t eligible to connect for automatic e-receipt submission.

Personally, I will not be continuing to use ReceiptPal. This is mainly because neither of my email addresses is eligible to connect, so I’m not eligible to redeem rewards, and given the small payouts, it isn’t worth it to me to set up a new email account just for ReceiptPal.

However, if you do have an eligible email address that connects to ReceiptPal, frequently make in-store purchases and/or frequently shop at Amazon, Kroger, Starbucks, Walmart or Instacart, then ReceiptPal may be worth your time. The app itself is completely legitimate. It doesn’t require any planning ahead, and it does offer e-gift cards in exchange for simply uploading receipts after purchase.

Fortunately, ReceiptPal is far from the only cash back app available. Be sure to also check out Ibotta, Checkout 51, Fetch Rewards, Rakuten and Slide for more opportunities to save.

Have you uploaded receipts with ReceiptPal? Let us know about your experience in our Clark.com Community!

Article Updates

September 12, 2023: Updated app store reviews and verified redemption values