ZipZero Review: Earn From Scanning Your Receipts

Want to earn some extra money to help with your bills? Then take a look at this ZipZero review to see why this receipt scanning app is one not to be missed.

ZipZero failing to pay – September 2021

It looks like that ZipZero will no longer be paying users for scanning their receipts. You can find out the latest at the bottom of this post.

10-second ZipZero review

A case of just snapping a picture of your receipt and uploading it using the ZipZero app. Money you make can be put towards certain utility bills. The only thing to really let it down is it struggles with A4 receipts.

ZipZero

It seems to me that there’s an ever-increasing amount of receipt scanning apps available. But that’s good news for us as it gives even more opportunities to earn.

Usually, you can earn cash or Amazon vouchers as your reward. But ZipZero is slightly different and instead, sends any money you earn towards a bill of your choice.

What is ZipZero?

ZipZero is owned by ZipZero Global Limited, a UK company based in London, established in January 2019.

Taken from their website:

We founded ZIPZERO because we wanted to find a way to help households get out of the rut of making ends meet.

What became all the more clear was that we wanted to find a way to help everyone else break free from the burden of monthly bills. For us, paying zero for our monthly bills is everything.

How does ZipZero work?

It’s all very simple. Download the app to your phone, either Apple or Android. Then, every time you purchase an item, take a photo of the receipt and you receive 1% of the total amount back into your ZipZero account.

ZipZero will accept receipts from any purchase made from a UK shop. The purchase does need to be made for personal reasons (ie not on behalf of a company) and made by you or a member of your household.

The money from your ZipZero account can then be put towards a utility bill of your choosing.

Is it safe?

Security is always a concern when it comes to signing up to new apps. The fact is, ZipZero requires very little in the way of personal information and the receipts that you upload don’t usually contain sensitive details either. Even if you have a receipt with your name and address on, you don’t have to submit it.

The only concern you may have, is that you will need to send over your account details for you to receive payment. However, there is minimal damage that can be made if these details fall into the wrong hands.

The good

Unlike most receipt scanning apps, there are very few barriers when using ZipZero… except for online grocery shopping (see below). You can scan as many receipts as you like and from any shop.

You are limited to earnings of £50 per month, but I’m pretty sure most of us don’t spend £5000 in such a short period.

The app is very easy to use, and it usually takes a few seconds to scan a receipt.

Their customer service has been very good whenever I’ve had a question and I’ve never had to wait more than a few hours for a reply.

The bad

The main issue with this app comes from online grocery shopping. Previously, you could just take a photo of your receipt and earn your cashback. However, in April 2020 they changed this. To receive your cashback, you would need to book your shopping by clicking through the ZipZero app first.

This really is unnecessary and I have no idea why ZipZero has introduced it.

I have found that the app still won’t read all receipts and will read some incorrectly. I regularly shop at Greggs (only for salads…) and use a gift card. The balance always throws the Gener8 app and sometimes shows more, sometimes less.

This wouldn’t be a problem apart from ZipZero seems to correct the receipts that pay too much but leave the ones that pay too little.

The only other downside is that ZipZero cannot accept Tesco online receipts. However, they have told me they are working on it.

Adding payment accounts

Personally, I am not a fan of how you are paid though. The money you earn needs to be paid straight towards a utility bill. Utility bills include: electricity, gas, water, internet, phone bill and council tax.

But finding account details for some of these companies are far harder than it used to be. Long gone are the days when I received paper bills with all the account details.

I tried making a payment to my energy company. I am with Octopus Energy (click here for £50 when you join) but they do not provide any bank account details to pay directly. So I needed to email them to find their account and sort number. In fact, they weren’t overly helpful and just kept directing me to a page where I could enter my card details to make an overpayment. It took about four emails and quite some explaining before they gave me the details.

However, ZipZero only allows you to enter numbers when entering your account details. My Octopus account is a mixture of numbers and letters. That meant I needed to email ZipZero to manually add the details.

To be fair to them though, they added the details quite quickly.

ZipZero online cashback

Recently, ZipZero has introduced a ‘shopping’ option to its app. Simply find the store you want to shop at through the app, click on the link and shop as normal. You will then earn a % back into your ZipZero account.

As I said above, you have to click through the app if you want to receive cashback for your receipts from supermarkets.

For all other stores cashback rates aren’t as good as compared to some of the best cashback sites, so it’s not a feature I would use.

My ZipZero review conclusion

So, is joining ZipZero worthwhile? I understand partly why ZipZero has decided to go down the route of paying your utility bills directly. It’s always important to clear your bills before you spend elsewhere.

However, it does feel a little bit like they’re telling you what you can spend your money on.

But, that is a very minor downside. It’s an easy to use app that gives you 1% back on everything you buy that provides a receipt. You can’t say fairer than that! This is certainly my new favourite receipt scanning app and certainly worth signing up to.

Find out more about ZipZero

If my ZipZero review has interested you, why not take a look at the best receipt scanning apps.

Update 20th April 2020

I have received an email from ZipZero explaining that they are temporarily changing their terms. In all honesty, this isn’t a massive surprise as many companies are struggling in the current climate.

ZipZero will not be taking on any new customers for the moment. They will also be reducing payments from 1% down to 0.5%. Finally, it will take 7 days for receipts to be validated, rather than 2.

How long this will last for… we will have to see.

ZipZero stopping payments

Further to my above update, on June 18th, ZipZero sent out this email:

Dear ZIPZERO USERS,

First off, we hope you’re doing well. It’s time for another update regarding our situation following the Covid-19-related downturn at the end of March. 

We have some excellent news. We have managed to secure a significant pool of money, which will allow us to run the business without any more major funding hiccups for a long time. As you can imagine, the paperwork involved in a transaction of this size is significant and this has impacted our timing. Right now we are in the process of signing off on the documents and we expect to receive the funding within the next two weeks. 

For our users, it means that as soon as that happens, we will immediately carry out all pending transfers and return to the regular processing of new transfers. We apologise for the long delay and the inconvenience it has caused. On our side, the situation has been equally frustrating and we can’t wait to get back to helping you all zip down your bills. 

So it looks like ZipZero were struggling financially, more than I expected.

After doing some digging, I discovered that users hadn’t received their payouts for the last couple of months. It’s not something I have experienced as I haven’t had enough to withdraw.

October 2020

It transpired that ZipZero didn’t get the cash injection that they were hoping for. On their Facebook page they wrote:

In sum, we confirm that the fundraising process is on track and progressing optimally. At the moment, we are keeping our potential investor list broad, with the plan to narrow down our options to a viable shortlist at the beginning of November. At that point, we will start the due diligence process and negotiations phase immediately with our select candidates for investment. It’s really important to us that our investors not only see the monetary value in our business – but also the value in our dedicated social mission to help UK households cover their monthly bills.

So, they seem quite optimistic that they will be operating normally again soon. But they were equally optimistic six months before.

ZipZero claims that they are not selling on the data they collect from the receipts at the moment. However, I find it odd that the company seems still to be operating with no income for so long. I don’t know many large organisations that can do this, let alone a small company like ZipZero.

January 2021

ZipZero again released a statement saying they have yet to find investors, but are positive they will find some soon. As this has been dragging out for some time now, I would strongly advise against scanning any receipts for them.

March 2021

Once again, ZipZero claims to be getting closer to a solution. They have ’15 investors’, but they want to make sure they choose the right one. For a company that tells us that it still isn’t earning money, it seems strange that they are still being quite so choosy. And accepting receipts from users.

Update September 2021

The latest news from ZipZero is to say that they were not able to secure funding. Their latest plan is to become a cashback app. So, when you make a purchase at a retailer, you will go through ZipZero first and click on a link provided by them. This will earn you cashback.

The problem I have with this is that they are telling people that have been scanning their receipts over the last 18 months, that this is the only way they will get the money they have earned.

Another issue I have is that there are plenty of established cashback sites out there. Why would you move to another one, especially when that new site has a sketchy record of paying users?