Storewards review: Get paid for your Receipts

How would you like to earn a bit extra just from taking photos of your receipts? Well, several apps will pay you to find out more about your shopping habits. Take a look at this Storewards review to see how much you can expect to make.

10-second Storewards review

Not a bad little earner as receipt scanning apps go. These will never make you a fortune but are great as an easy side income. It’s simple to use, although it doesn’t like taking photos of A4 receipts. Combine with other similar apps to really boost your income.

Storewards

Over the last few years, I’ve managed to make several hundred pounds from receipt scanning apps. Okay, so it’s not a life-changing amount, but it helps towards Christmas and takes little effort.

I have several receipt scanning apps that I use regularly and one that I recommend everybody avoided was called Receipt Hog. Anyhow, in August 2020 it was announced that Receipt Hog was closing for UK customers and instead, users were directed to another app called Storewards. In the hope that it couldn’t be any worse, I decided to give it a go.

What is Storewards?

As I mentioned above, Storewards is a receipt scanning app that will reward you with coins for taking photos of your receipts. Once you reach a certain number of coins, you can exchange them for Amazon vouchers or PayPal.

How does Storewards make money?

Why would any company pay you for your receipts? Well, the data Storewards collects is used for marketing purposes. It is collated with other users’ data and sold to companies interested in shopping habits. The information you provide is not identifiable to you and Storeward’s clients will never be able to contact you directly.

Which receipts are accepted?

First of all, you are limited to only submitting 35 receipts each week, although for many of us, that shouldn’t be a problem. You must also take your photos within 14 days of receiving your receipt. Storewards will accept receipts from most retailers. In fact, it’s easier for me to list where receipts aren’t accepted from:

1. Post Office
2. Service receipts/payments
3. Household bills
4. Credit card slips
5. Hand-Written Receipts
6. Ticket Stubs
7. Refund/Return of Purchase Slips
8. Receipts From Non-Retailer Businesses (i.e. service, entertainment, government, utilities)
9. Bus
10. Railway
11. Cinema
12. Lottery
13. Entrance to a venue
14. Bank
15. Petrol/gas
16. Money exchange
17. Money transfers
18. Money withdrawals
19. Parking
20. Leisure sports (swimming, squash, etc.)

What is a valid receipt?

For a receipt to be valid it must have the name of the product purchased. For example, a product code isn’t acceptable. A receipt must also include the following information:

• Store name (address and phone number if available).
• Purchase date 
• Purchase time
• Purchase’s total.
• Barcodes (if any).
• The product and price

For every receipt you submit, you receive 600 coins. Submitting receipts also moves you up levels and each time you hit a new level, you are given a coin bonus.

Is it easy to use?

One of the main gripes when it comes to receipt apps is not always how much they pay, but how easy they are to use. Some (like Shoppix), tend to be very good. You take your photos and the app recognises the receipt without any issues. Others can be a little more temperamental. Receipt Hog was always one that I found that liked to reject photos, no matter what angle I used.

Storewards is generally quite good… but it struggles with A4 receipts. I say struggles, it will never accept them from me. This is very frustrating as I shop online with Tesco each week and the receipts always come on A4 paper.

And if you have an issue with a receipt, there is little you can do. I have contacted Storewards before as the app told me that one of my receipts had already been submitted, even though it was brand new. Customer services told me they can’t override the system or award coins because the process is automated.

Storewards now allows you to earn from sending your e-receipts. However, it’s nowhere near as generous and only gives you 50 coins for each receipt and you can only send in 5 per week. Rival apps, like Shoppix, pay you the standard amount for e-receipts and don’t have such a strict limit.

Bonus points

There are a couple of ways to earn bonus points. You can link your Amazon account to Storewards for 2000 coins and your email account for 1000 coins. You will then receive these coins again for the accounts to stay connected every month.

This isn’t something I feel comfortable doing, as you need to enter your login details for fairly sensitive accounts. Not that I think anything is wrong with Storewards, but the fewer places these details are shared, the better. And it’s not like they’re paying you much for the privilege.

There is also a daily bonus on offer. Open up the app each day and you’ll receive bonus coins. Keep the streak up and you’ll earn even more coins.

How much can you earn?

Let’s be realistic here, receipt apps are never going to earn you a fortune. However, the same receipt can be used for multiple apps and used together, they can be quite a good earner. In fact, if you download all of them, there’s no reason why you couldn’t earn £200+ per year.

From this app alone, how much you earn depends partly on how often you shop. A £5 Amazon voucher will cost you 50,000 coins – the equivalent of 83 receipts. But with the added coins from the other tasks I mentioned above, you should be looking at far fewer receipts.

If Amazon vouchers aren’t your thing, you can withdraw through PayPal instead. The only issue is that this costs you slightly more in coins.

Storewards refer a friend

Storewards used to offer a referral programme, although it now seems to have been removed from the app. The code I have listed below may still work.

What other people think

When writing my reviews, I always like to look around to see what other users think. Storewards scores an average 3.4 out of 5 on the Apple store but a decent 4.2 out of 5 on the Google Play store.

My Storewards review conclusion

All in all, not a bad app. The likes of Shopprize and Shoppix pay slightly more, but there’s not a huge difference. And if you’re using one app to take photos of receipts, you might as well use them all.

Storewards invite code

If you fancy giving the app a try, click on one of the links below to download it to your device. And use my invite code 2ia03 for bonus coins. Please note that Storewards only invites a limited number of people, so it’s not always possible to sign up.

Android users: download the app

iOS users: download the app

Is Storewards registration closed?

Unfortunately, some receipt scanning apps, like Storewards and Amazon Shopper Panel, only accept a limited number of participants. If they are not taking on new users, there will be a notification as you try to sign up. There is little you can do but wait until spaces become available… or try some other receipt apps.

Please note that this post contains an affiliate code.