Cashback offers are sweeping the nation, with shoppers and gamers alike taking the opportunity to earn – you guessed it – cash back from their spending, be it in the supermarket shop or a slots game.
At a glance, it doesn’t seem to make much sense – why would a betting site offer cashback on your losses? Indeed, the opportunity to claim a slice of your outgoings back from the bookies after an unlucky loss may seem like a notion too good to be true. The answer becomes a little clearer when you consider that the cash isn’t coming directly from the site.
Still confused? Don’t be. What you may not know about is the presence of a third-party affiliate, known as ‘cashback portals’, who act as a virtual broker between you, the player, and the sites.
In the world of shopping and betting on the go, cashback portals such as Quidco have consumers sign up to their site, where they are met with a range of deals exclusively offered to them by any number of brands and service providers.
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Quidco takes their money from the brand and delivers the consumer a percentage of their outlay back to their bank account. It’s simpler than it sounds, and, in theory, everyone’s a winner.
Voucher Deals
Typically, it hasn’t taken long for online gambling to catch up. Where shoppers get a relatively meagre payback on their outlay, gamers have been known to receive much more substantial cashback figures. For example, cashback portal Gambling Deals.com reviews the best gambling sites online for offers. A number of iGaming sites are signed up for this cashback revolution, including InterCasino, Betfred, and BetVictor, and these offers extend across casinos, slots, bingo and sports betting.
The theory, of course, is that the consumer wins twice here, having been offered exclusive new deals and cashback on their losses. The online casino takes a profit they wouldn’t have otherwise seen, and the broker takes a slice in between.
In a roundabout way, it’s Groupon for gamblers, but with the added benefit of cashback. Of course, not every betting site or online casino is included as a partner of these cashback providers, and players who prefer a certain site may find themselves disappointed.
Conclusion
To qualify for these offers, all players must be brand new to each individual site at the time of registering and, in many cases, the amount of cashback is capped at a certain rate. That said, these caps are often pretty reasonable and, using Gambling Deals as an example, users can earn up to £300 per partner per calendar month. The referral nature of this system goes one further, too, and users who refer friends to cashback portals are often subject to bonuses.
To many, cashback gambling seems too good to be true, and allowing a third party into their iGaming and betting behaviours is uncomfortable.