There has been a lot of discussion about this in WeChat groups lately, so here’s a quick roundup. If you find a better deal, feel free to leave a comment!

Offer Details

AMEX recently has a pretty solid offer on Instacart: spend $50 and get either $25 back or 2500 MR points (personally, I feel MR offers show up especially often on the AMEX Green). Instacart is a grocery delivery service that helps you buy household items and fresh groceries from various supermarkets and wholesale clubs, then delivers them to your door the same day. Because there is labor and transportation involved, most prices on Instacart are noticeably higher than what you would pay shopping in-store directly.

The good news is that this AMEX Offer is generous enough that, if used well, you can still save quite a bit. Also, this offer can be used twice. On my two cards, one got the MR version (the Green Card really shines here) and one got the cash version, as shown below:

Side note: Why do I say the Green Card is so good? This may be the only reason I’m still keeping the refreshed version of the Green Card: it gets a ton of MR offers.

How to Maximize It

Sign-up Offer

If you sign up for Instacart through a referral link, you can get a $10 bonus, but that is not the best deal. If you sign up directly without using a referral, the system usually pushes a banner offer to you automatically, often for $15 or $20, which is much better than the referral bonus. Here’s the step-by-step process:

  • Go to the official site and sign up: https://www.instacart.com
  • After registering, select the 14-day free delivery trial. Just click to activate it. If you do not place an order, there is no need to cancel. If you do place an order, remember to cancel later (within 2 weeks) so you do not get charged.
  • Choose the supermarket or big-box store you want. Depending on where you live, there are usually quite a few options, and you can always change it later.
  • Enter the store you selected and wait a few seconds. A banner offer should pop up in the middle, and you need to click claim. Mine showed $15; after clicking it, it changed to a thumbs-up icon.
  • After getting the $15-$20 offer, do not rush to place the order yet—there is also a Drop offer.

Drop Offer

Drop has long had a first-purchase offer for Instacart. You need to click through from Drop into the app, or send the link to your email and use that link to make the purchase. In practice, this works like a shopping portal. Instacart usually does not have a standard shopping portal available, so this Drop offer is actually pretty good. Mine is 4000 points, which is basically equal to a $4 bonus.

Example Purchase

Here’s a random example shopping cart:

At checkout, you need to enter your Costco membership number. Some products do not require it. If you do not have an account and want to sign up, you can refer to this article, or borrow a membership number from a friend. Note that Instacart purchases do not count toward Costco rewards.

Keep your checkout total above $50 so the AMEX Offer will trigger.

Let’s do the math: if you get the cash version, it is effectively 50-25-4=$21 for $65/$70 worth of groceries (depending on whether your first-order bonus is $15 or $20). If you get the MR version and value MR at 1.5c/p, it is effectively $8.5 for $65/$70. Of course, there is also the service fee and driver tip.

Finally, since the offer can be used twice, when you make the second purchase, just use incognito mode or a different browser to register another Instacart account. And at the same time, use a different Drop account as well.

enjoy～！