What Does Fetch Do With Your Receipts?

Fetch Rewards is a loyalty and rewards application where users earn points by submitting shopping receipts. These points can be redeemed for various rewards, such as gift cards from popular brands. The application transforms receipt information into a valuable currency, making everyday purchases rewarding for its users.

How Receipts Fuel Your Rewards

When a user scans a physical receipt or connects an email account for digital receipts, Fetch processes the image or data to extract specific purchase details. The application identifies the store name, the date of purchase, the total amount spent, and, importantly, individual items bought. This extraction allows Fetch to understand the contents of a shopping trip.

The extracted data is then directly applied to the user’s account to award points. Fetch assigns a minimum of 25 points for every eligible receipt scanned, regardless of the purchase amount. Beyond these base points, users can earn significantly more by purchasing specific brands or products featured in “Special Offers” within the app. These offers often provide bonus points for buying certain items or spending a specified amount on particular brands. This system links purchasing habits to reward earnings, as users accrue more points by engaging with targeted promotions.

This detailed item-level data also enables Fetch to personalize offers and promotions presented to the user. By analyzing past purchases, the app can suggest relevant deals, making the reward-earning process more efficient and tailored to individual shopping preferences. Users can find these personalized offers in the “Discover” section of the app, allowing them to plan purchases around high-value earning opportunities. The points earned can then be redeemed for gift cards, which can be used to save money on future purchases or acquire desired items.

Transforming Receipt Data into Market Insights

Beyond the direct user benefit of earning rewards, the collective purchase data from millions of submitted receipts serves a broader commercial purpose for Fetch. The application aggregates and anonymizes this vast amount of shopping information, removing any direct personal identifiers. This de-identified data then becomes a valuable resource for understanding consumer behavior on a large scale.

Fetch processes this aggregated data to identify overarching consumer trends, purchasing habits, and shifts in brand loyalty across various product categories. For instance, it can reveal how promotions impact sales, analyze cross-purchase behavior (what products are often bought together), and conduct competitive analyses for brands. These insights are then provided or sold to consumer brands and market research firms, helping them make informed business decisions. The data can inform marketing strategies, product development, and inventory management for participating companies.

For example, Fetch’s data has been used to track inflation’s impact on consumer spending, showing how purchasing habits change in response to rising prices. Brands gain visibility into real-time market dynamics, allowing them to optimize their strategies based on verifiable purchase history rather than just survey data. This business model creates a revenue stream for Fetch that supports the rewards offered to users, establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between consumers, Fetch, and various brands.

Protecting Your Information

Fetch prioritizes the protection of user information through various security and privacy measures. The company commits to handling personal data responsibly, especially concerning the aggregation and anonymization processes for market insights. Before data is shared with brands or market research firms, it is stripped of personally identifiable information, ensuring individual user identities are not linked to the purchasing trends.

Personal identifying information, such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers, collected during account creation, is handled separately and securely. Fetch does not require or store sensitive financial details like full credit card or bank account numbers, as receipts typically only display the last few digits of a card. This minimizes the risk of financial data compromise. Fetch also employs security practices such as data encryption and multi-factor authentication to protect user accounts and information.

Fetch’s privacy policy indicates that while aggregated data is used for market insights, sensitive personal information is not sold or shared with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising without explicit consent. Users maintain control over their data, with options to manage linked accounts and understand how their information is used. This approach aims to build trust with users by providing transparency and robust safeguards for their data.