Staying Fit
Paul Spella
Online shopping has its perks — you can shop in your underwear, the merchandise gets delivered to your door, and return policies are very liberal. Money-saving browser extensions can also help you enjoy maximum discounts.
What’s a browser extension? It’s a module that you can download from your browser’s store to help you customize your shopping experience. When you shop, the extension works in the background to compare its list of discount offers against the pages you’re on, and when it finds a match, it will pop up the offer right on the page so you can activate discounts or earn cash back.
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We have picked our five favorite money-saving browser extensions based on trust and reputation, ease of use and features, cash back, rewards, discount performance and shopping partnerships.
Honey
One of the most popular money-saving, cash-back browser extensions is Honey. Owned by PayPal, Honey’s terms include a promise of not selling your data to other companies. Honey will compare prices with other online retailers, alert you to price drops and offer coupons on purchases when available. It will also make suggestions and track prices using a unique best-price tracking feature. Honey’s account and payment system is fully integrated with PayPal so it can offer you the most flexible cash-back process, allowing money transfers with as little as a $10 threshold.
Rakuten
Founded in 1997 as Buy.com, Rakuten offers $30 cash back for referrals, and a true cash-back rewards program using PayPal in addition to other options. Rakuten cash-back payouts are scheduled quarterly. Rakuten offers features rivaling Honey’s while benefiting from a larger number of merchant partnerships that compete with Capital One Shopping.
Capital One Shopping
Launched in 2016 as Wikibuy, the platform was acquired by Capital One in 2018. Capital One Shopping has received some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings and review scores and is partnered with the largest number of online stores, with over 30,000 merchants worldwide. Capital One Shopping offers one of the best price comparison tools, with a strong rewards program offering anywhere from 2.5 percent to 10 percent depending on the merchant. Unlike with Rakuten and Honey, payout reward options are limited to gift cards without a true cash-back option or Paypal money transfer option, and there are no referral bonus offerings.
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