ZipZero review: the receipt scanning app that pays your bills

Take photos of your receipts and get up to £50 off your water, gas or electric utility bills or council tax each month with the Zipzero app.

Each time you go shopping – whether it’s to grab a top-up of milk and bread, you’re buying essential stuff for the kids, or treating yourself to a new something – you can earn cash with your receipt.

The next time the cashier in the store asks if you want the receipt emailed, just say no.

You need to hang onto the receipt to allow you to make money.

Here’s how this simple little app works.

Earn up to £50 a month with Zipzero

Zipzero is a straightforward app to use. There aren’t a lot of options, which makes it fast and smooth to use.

After you’ve been shopping, open the app, snap a photo of the receipt, and that’s it.

You’re able to use receipts from purchases you, or members of your household, have made.

When scanning your receipt, make sure everything is visible – from the store name at the top to the date and time at the bottom.

A few days later (they need the time to check the receipt details), the money shows in the app.

You will earn at least 0.5% of each transaction you make. When you’ve saved up just £1, you can cash out.

You’re not able to take out money straight to your bank or PayPal, but you use the money earned to pay off your bills.

Changes to the app from October 2022

To make sure you can make as much as possible from the app, there are some changes taking place going forward.

This is REALLY good news!

Base and Premium Units will no longer be linked!

You used to collect points for taking photos of your receipts. Then, because of changes back in September 2021, it changed, and you could only get points for photos (Base Units) if you make an online purchase (Premium Units).

This is now going back to how it used to be.

You will no longer need to earn Premium Units to release Base Units, meaning you can cash out far more quicker!

You do, however, need to wait for 90 days to have passed before the Base Units are released to cash out.

Payout of old Base Units

If you have any old pending base units accumulated in your ZIPZERO wallet, you can access them by keeping active in the app.

So, keep shopping and scanning receipts.

If you stay active, they will release up to £10 from your pending balance on the 1st of each month – until the old base unit is depleted.

Simpler rewards for online shopping

You will get rewards for all your online shopping receipts or confirmations.

In-store Premium Rewards are launching

ZIPZERO is introducing in-store Premium shopping.

You will be able to earn more than 0.5% from your shopping in high street stores.

How Zipzero works

You need to add the bank account details for whoever you want to pay.

If you can’t find the account details on your latest bill, head to the FAQ section of the app and there are hundreds of companies and councils listed out to make things easier.

But, just so you know, you’re not able to pay bills for Tesco Mobile, Giff Gaff, Pay As You Go SIMS, PlusNet, or your TV License.

You also can’t use any money you earn to pay your credit card bill, rent, mortgage, loan, debt collectors or for subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify.

When it comes to any direct debits for bills, you don’t need to worry.

On the bill due date, the direct debit will automatically reduce the amount you pay, as long as you click to redeem from Zipzero seven working days before the direct debit date.

The app pays your monthly bills

So, instead of cashing out into your bank, you’re able to have the money you earn get deducted from your household and utility bills.

Pick from the following types of essential monthly bills:

• Mobile phone bill
• Broadband
• Landline
• TV
• Gas
• Electric
• Water
• Council Tax

You can also choose to have multiple accounts set up, so if you want to switch between paying your phone one week and your water bill the next, then that’s fine.

How much can you *really* earn?

While I love making a few quid from using receipt scanning apps, it will just be a few quid.

Zipzero is probably not going to cut your bills totally or even in half.

You earn around 0.5% of each transaction you make, so you can kinda work out how much you can make each month.

If you’re a bit of a shopaholic on the high street, you can make more back than someone who only shops online, or is tighter with their spending.

Depending on how you use the app, you earn:

• 0.5% for sharing receipts and online confirmations connected with shopping with their Premium Partners (both online and offline)
• 0.1% (£0.01 in value as a minimum) for sharing receipts or online confirmations which have not come from shopping with their Premium Partners.

One thing to point out though, is it’s worth cashing out as soon as you hit the £1 limit.

You may think it’ll make more of an impact to save it up and reduce your bill by a bigger amount, but the money you earn is not protected in the same way as your cash in a bank.

If Zipzero were to close your account, or they stopped trading, you would lose any money you’ve saved up.

How does ZipZero make money?

Zipzero earns a commission from any purchases you make through the app.

They share some of the commissions with you in the form of cashback.

Use your account or it’ll be closed

You need to make sure you carry on using your account regularly, or they will close it.

This will mean you lose out on any points you’ve accumulated.

If you have not been active at least once in the last six months, your account will be closed.

Simply scan a photo of receipts or shop with one of their Premium Partners to keep your account active.

Zipzero review

Overall, I think something is better than nothing, and if I can reduce my bills a bit more each month, it saves money for something else.

Considering it takes seconds to take a photo on the app, it’s well worth using it.

I’ve been using the app since October 2019 and wanted to give it a full test run before sharing more details.

In that time, to be fair, I’ve not taken photos of all my receipts – whoops!

Ah, come on, I forget *blushes and smacks hand*

But, I have been able to cash out £3.15 to one of my bills.

Sure, it’s not a lot, but it’s free money – although it does make me think that I’ve sent £315 on the high street!!

Once Zipzero is available again, you will be able to find it in the iOS and Android app stores.

Save even more

Zipzero is basically a form of cashback on your shopping.

What’s great is that you can look to double up on other offers and apps to make even more money back, and reduce your costs significantly.

:: Come and join thousands of other savvy shoppers in the Reduce Your Supermarket Spend Facebook community to find out tips and tricks to save money on your food shop.

Changes to the app from September 2021

Zipzero is amazing at communicating, and regular users should be up to date with the changes taking place with the app.

The pandemic hasn’t been easy on lots of us, with Zipzero struggling to keep their own bills paid.

They temporarily halted making payments to users while they sought investor backing.

Long story short, they are now taking a slightly different direction, which means everyone will be able to cash out their earnings very soon.

What happens next with Zipzero?

A new app update is coming in autumn 2021.

As well as getting paid to scan receipts with Zipzero, you will be able to earn money back when shopping with your favourite retailers.

You will be able to use it to get cashback when you shop (up to 10% back) and you will still use it to make money from scanning your receipts. This will be at a base rate of 0.5%.

Current users: keep using the app as normal.

When the new app relaunches, you will get paid any historic rewards you’ve had pending.

As a warning, if you delete it between now and when the new app is available, you won’t be able to get it back in its current form.

New users: a brand new Zipzero app will be launched on 22 November 2021.