Question:
Assalaamu ‘Alaikum.
There is an online shopping site called Flipkart which has a reward program called ‘Flipkart supercoins’.In this program whenever a customer purchases products from this site, Flipkart automatically adds 4 supercoins to the customers’ account as a reward for every 100 spent.
The customer has the option of using the supercoins for obtaining various offers and discounts further,while shopping. For example, a customer has 200 supercoins in his account.Now Flipkart provides different offers like “use 20 supercoins to avail $100 discount on purchase of groceries worth $750” or “buy a flipkart gift card of $.500 using 50 supercoins” or “buy a product worth $200 by paying $175 along with 25 supercoins”.
Flipkart does not exactly define the value of a supercoin, for example it does not say that 1 supercoin is equal to 1 rupee and so on. Therefore, from time to time the offers and discount rates keep changing with respect to supercoins, for example it offers a gift card worth $250 for 250 supercoins and sometimes it offers $300 worth of gift card for 150 supercoins.
I wanted to know if is permissible to use these coins for availing discounts and gift cards that are free of cost because such gift cards are obtained by using those supercoins only.
Answer:
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
According to your explanation of the rewards scheme ‘supercoins’, the rewards/coins (redeemable for cash, gift cards, permissible items, etc.) given by such companies is considered Hiba (gift) and permissible for you to redeem and use. Such schemes are incentive programs to encourage customers’ purchases and does not involve interest.
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
Mufti Arshad Ali
Darul Iftaa, Jaamia Madinatul Uloom (Trinidad)
