If you’re anything like me, your purse or wallet is stuffed full of old receipts.
You might keep them for budgeting purposes, in case you need to return something or want to check a price, but ultimately they’re just junk and get thrown away.
What if there was a way to make money out of all these receipts?
According to Receipt Hog, there is!
What is Receipt Hog?
Receipt Hog is an app that uses your phone camera to submit pictures of receipts in exchange for points or ‘coins’. When you collect enough coins, you can cash out.
You can get the app on the App Store or Google Play.
This works because Receipt Hog sell on the data collected from these receipts to marketing companies. For the companies, the information printed on your receipts is really valuable as they can learn about what people buy, which shops they go to at what time of day and more.
Your personal information will stay anonymous.
Show me the money!
In Receipt Hog, your receipts are rewarded with ‘coins’ which can then be exchanged for cash (paid by Paypal) or Amazon vouchers.
They have a fairly complicated system with different types of rewards based on the type of shop and the amount you spend:
The main way you earn rewards is with coins. However, not all receipts are eligible for coins. You can earn coins with receipts from the following kinds of shops:
- supermarkets
- convenience stores
- off licenses
- chemists
- pet shops
- toy shops
- discount shops
The amount of coins depends on how much you spent. A supermarket shop of over £100 earns you 20 coins, whereas a receipt for less than £10 earns you 5 coins.
The app also features ‘hog slots‘. Basically, this is a mini slot machine game where you have to match symbols to win extra coins. I’ve never won more than about 10 coins at a time, but you could apparently win up to 400. You earn a spin on the hog slots when you buy the following:
- clothes
- electronics
- office supplies
- books
- arts and crafts
- sports goods
- home goods
Finally, each receipt earns an entry into a monthly sweepstake for up to 5,000 coins. In addition to all of the above receipts, you can earn entries from receipts for:
- fuel
- restaurants
- bars
You can also earn extra spins on the hog slots by meeting weekly or monthly challenges such as scanning every week, and by referring friends. When you sign up, you will get your own referral code. For every friend who signs up with your code, you will get 10 spins and they will get 5.
If you do want to sign up, feel free to use my Receipt Hog referral code swipt975 to get your free 5 spins.
You can redeem your coins once you reach the following thresholds:
Amazon vouchers
£3 – 1,000 coins
£10 – 2,850 coins
£20 – 5,300 coins
£50 – 12,000 coins
PayPal
£5 – 1,500 coins
£10 – 2,850 coins
£20 – 5,300 coins
£50 – 12,000 coins
You can only scan receipts dating back two weeks, so if you are a receipt hoarder like me, don’t get too excited thinking you’re sitting on a massive pile of cash.
My experience
I’ve been diligently scanning my receipts for over four months now and I’m only about half way to the first payout!
That first payout is THREE WHOLE POUNDS of Amazon vouchers, by the way.
I’ve read a lot of other really positive reviews of Receipt Hog and some people are obviously doing well.
For me, it’s just not worth the time. It only takes a couple of minutes to scan each receipt, but it is a chore when you don’t see any instant payout.
I don’t mind scanning receipts for cashback apps like Shopmium and CheckoutSmart because you get real money paid into your bank account within days!
With Receipt Hog, at the rate I’m going, it will take me around eight months to earn a measly £3.
Maybe I just don’t shop enough and generate enough receipts? At the moment, we mostly do one ‘big shop’ and a couple of smaller shops to get more milk or whatever during the week. We are trying to be pretty frugal at the moment but anything else we do buy tends to be online. So I only have 3 or 4 receipts a week, max, to scan.
At this pace, progress is slooooooow! If you shop a lot and have tons of receipts you will obviously see faster progress.
To be honest, it kind of annoys me that the payouts are so low because this data must be worth a fortune to the marketing companies. I dread to think how much Receipt Hog is getting from selling our info on.
Also, recently the app has been sneaking in more and more little surveys each time you submit a receipt. It’s usually only one multiple choice question each time so it only takes a second, but still, that’s extra value they’re getting from us for nothing!
Since I’ve already invested so much time in this app, I’m going to carry on until I reach my first payout. But after that I won’t be bothering.
Boost My Budget rating
2/5
For me, the payout is just not worth the effort. But hey, it’s still essentially free cash, so you might find it worth a try.
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