Gift Cards Rewards: Shopkick for iPhone

Earn points toward purchases at your favorite stores

A mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Shopkick allows you to earn points toward discounts on items at the stores you shop in most.

Using a GPS tracker, Shopkick locates all stores that you’re within a certain range of. It then sends a signal to the store itself to inform those participating that a shopper is nearby. Earning points, known on Shopkick as kickbucks, is as easy as entering the store. You don’t even need to necessarily have bought anything in order to receive some kickbucks.

Similar to Foursquare, you can earn additional kickbucks by doing certain things at specific stores, such as scanning an item with your device’s camera. Testing products at certain stores will additionally earn you some points. The points you earn are store-specific but can convert directly into actual discounts at the store in question.

Unfortunately, Shopkick is of limited use to people who live outside of the Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, or Chicago shopping areas. Currently, very few stores are participating, although if it proves successful, more cities and stores promise to follow in the near future. Dallas, Miami, and Minneapolis are cities in which a small handful of stores have just implemented Shopkick's technology to a limited extent, for example.

If you’re looking for an interactive way to earn points toward your purchases, give Shopkick a try.