In many countries, charge/credit card providers face strong competitions that they often offer incentives such as redeemable points or cashback or special retailer discounts. Somehow, this idea never quite arrive in Ireland. Bar from American Express (which is not the most widely accepted payment card) I am not aware of any other banks/card providers in Ireland that give any sort of members awards.

There are a couple of non-bank based credit card providers that give some form of incentives to their users. Ryanair’s comes in the form of free flights but according to a friend, in order to redeem these free flights, the booking has to be done via the premium call centre number, so it really isn’t an incentive per se. Tesco credit card users earns Club Card points. Be aware though that the interest rates of these providers tend to be relatively high – which wouldn’t bother anyone who’s savvy with their finances and therefore paying off their bills immediately, but for those who use credit cards as cashflow solutions, this could wind them up deeper and deeper in debt.

Well, a new Irish online shopping aggregator site called BeThrifty has just been launched, promising cashback on purchases made through the site, linked to the different online sites that BeThrifty is affiliated with. Apple Store, Tesco Online, CD Wow, Pixmania, Miss Selfridge, Skype and eBookers are among those affiliated. Not Amazon though, bummer.

The amount of cashback varied from site to site. And you need to be signed up with BeThrifty in order to use this service. According to the FAQ, you will be paid either directly to your bank account or via PayPal. If you’re worried about database security that we’ve heard so much of nowadays, it’ll be prudent to use PayPal instead of providing your bank account details in order to get your cashback.

Ps: since this site is very new, it would appear it is not very stable as yet…