Saving money when buying groceries online will soon be easier. After years of attempts to integrate a full selection of digital coupons onto its platform, Instacart is now partnering with Ibotta to present Ibotta’s offers as digital coupons that you can clip when ordering groceries for pickup or delivery from your favorite nearby grocery store.
“By joining the Ibotta Performance Network, Instacart will deliver more coupons that are timely and relevant to its consumers, helping consumers save money on their everyday purchases,” the companies said in announcing their partnership, which will see Ibotta offers become available on Instacart later this year.
The Ibotta Performance Network was initially a way to integrate the cash-back offers that Ibotta currently provides on its app, onto retailers’ own platforms, alongside or instead of traditional digital coupons. So Walmart hosts Ibotta offers on its website and app, and calls them “Walmart Cash.” Dollar General’s version is “DG Cash Back.”
Earlier this year, though, Ibotta began launching retail partnerships in which its cash-back offers essentially became digital coupons. Family Dollar’s “Smart Coupons” are now powered by Ibotta. Later this year, the digital coupons offered by the Midwestern grocery chain Schnucks will be as well. To shoppers, it’s basically six of one, half dozen of the other, as instead of getting an Ibotta rebate after a purchase, they get an Ibotta-powered discount at the time of purchase.
But making its offers available as either rebates or coupons now gives Ibotta the flexibility to work with a platform like Instacart, “the first grocery technology company to join the Ibotta Performance Network,” Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach pointed out in a statement.
Coupons have never exactly been featured prominently on Instacart. With some retailers, you can apply the store’s digital coupons if you place an Instacart order through that retailer’s website or app. With other retailers, you can’t. If you place an order through Instacart itself, the retailers’ digital coupons won’t apply. And in no cases will Instacart accept paper coupons.
So Instacart first tried offering its own digital coupons nearly a decade ago. It’s tweaked the program several times since then, but digital coupons are still far less common and far less convenient to use on Instacart as compared to the digital coupons and cash back offered by retailers – or Ibotta.
The new partnership means hundreds of individual digital offers from Ibotta’s thousands of brand partners will now be available on Instacart. So shoppers can save, while brands can get their offers in front of millions more shoppers who use Instacart. “Instacart is committed to helping consumers find more value, and today’s announcement underscores our goal of making online grocery shopping accessible to all,” Instacart’s Chief Business Officer Chris Rogers said in a statement.
Ordering groceries online used to be considered an expensive luxury, so anyone doing so likely wasn’t price-sensitive enough to care much about coupons. But now that online ordering has become more commonplace, there’s been a greater demand for coupon savings among those who like the convenience of online grocery shopping but not necessarily the cost.
Of course, Instacart shoppers are already paying for convenience, in the form of marked-up prices that are higher than in-store prices, and delivery fees if they don’t pick up their order themselves. So coupon savings will only go so far. But with the price of groceries these days, even for online shoppers, every discount helps.
Image source: Instacart
