I Paid my Rent Through Ribbon Rewards… Was It Worth It?

I finally put Ribbon Rewards through a proper MMOnline test.

Not a “read their website and rewrite the sales pitch” test.

An actual-money-leaving-my-bank-account test.

My rent is £675.

I sent £680.

Apparently checking the number before pressing Send is now an advanced personal-finance technique. 😂

The important bit?

The payment worked and the money reached my landlord.

I started with 1p

I wasn't brave enough — or fluffing daft enough — to begin by sending hundreds of pounds through something I'd never used before.

So my first Ribbon payment was...

1p.

That went through and I received confirmation showing the landlord/payment information.

Only after that did I try the real rent.

So we're now beyond...

“Ribbon says this works.”

We're at...

“I actually used it, and the rent reached the landlord.”

That's much more interesting to me...

Then I discovered the £5 problem 😅

This is the bit I misunderstood. This is the stuff I (the fluffing eejit) do so you don't have to!

I thought I could transfer money into the Griffin account Ribbon gave me and have it sitting there ready for me to sort out.

That isn't what happened in my test.

I sent £680 and it went on to the landlord.

Unfortunately, the amount I was actually supposed to send was...

£675.

So today's MMOnline financial lesson is very simple:

Check the amount before you hit Send.

The landlord wasn't exactly going to complain about the extra fiver. 😂

A useful update: who actually holds the money?

One of the comments on this post raised a very good question about the relationship between Ribbon, Scraye and Griffin Bank, so I went digging. Thank you @alonicus ...

There’s also something I can confirm from my own actual test, rather than just repeating marketing material...

I have a Griffin Bank account in my own name.

My payment route was... My normal bank → my Griffin Bank account → my landlord

I first sent the 1p test payment into that Griffin account. Then I sent the £680 rent payment into the same account, and it was forwarded on to my landlord.

I’ve now checked the current legal paperwork too. Ribbon and Ribbon Rewards are trading names of Scraye Technologies Ltd, while Griffin’s terms say Scraye provides access to the platform and Griffin provides the operating account for the customer’s funds. Companies House also confirms that Scraye Technologies Ltd, company number 12424477, is an active company.

So in my own case, this wasn’t £680 disappearing into some vague “Ribbon wallet”. I was given a Griffin Bank account in my name and paid the rent through that.

I’m still going to keep digging into the exact regulatory wording, because that is what I want MMOnline to be about:

Test it. Check it. Update it when we learn something useful.

And thanks to the commenter who raised it — this is exactly the sort of comment that makes a review better. 👍

What about the rewards?

Ribbon currently advertises a standard rate of:

1 point per £1 of rent

with:

100 points = £1 in vouchers.

So, at Ribbon's advertised standard rate, my accidental £680 payment would correspond to 680 points / £6.80 of voucher value.

But I'm deliberately not saying:

“I earned £6.80.”

Not yet.

I want to see exactly what appears in my own account first.

That's going to be an MMOnline rule:

What the company claims and what I personally verify are two different things.

What I've actually tested

✅ Opened the Ribbon account
✅ Made a 1p test payment
✅ Received payment confirmation
✅ Sent my real rent payment
✅ Landlord received the money
✅ Accidentally gave the landlord an extra £5 😂

Still to test...

🔹 Exactly how many points appear
🔹 How quickly they become usable
🔹 How easy voucher redemption is
🔹 Whether everything works just as smoothly next month

Preferably next month I'll also master the astonishing financial skill of paying £675 when the rent is £675.

Want to try Ribbon Rewards?

Ribbon currently has a referral scheme.

My referral code is:

EDWA09F1

Referral link:

https://www.ribbonrewards.io/?ref=EDWA09F1

Disclosure: If you join through my referral link and meet Ribbon's qualifying conditions, I may receive a referral reward too. Offers, rates and conditions can change, so always check Ribbon's current terms first.

The full MMOnline test

I've written a much more detailed review over on MakeMoneyOnline.live, including Griffin Bank, how the rewards are supposed to work, FAQs, what I've personally verified and what I'm still testing.

👉 https://makemoneyonline.live/ribbon-rewards-review-uk/

I'll update both posts once the points have appeared and I've tried actually redeeming them.

Until then...

£675, Edward. It's £675 you fluffing numpty! 🤦‍♂️😂

MMOnline

Real tests. Real money. No get-rich-quick nonsense.

Interesting post, thank you !

With any scheme like this, it's worth checking the FCA firms list to understand the scope of what is regulated. It looks like Griffin Bank are covered, but (as with most entries on the list) only certain activities are covered. I'd suggest it is worth understanding if Ribbon Rewards are treated as current account payments (covered) or e-money (may not be covered, the wording needs digging into).

I'd also suggest that because the scheme says it is run by Scraye Limited, how that interacts with Griffin Bank. Is Scraye purely responsible for the reward points, or does it touch your funds in any way. Looking on Companies House, there is no Scraye Ltd. There is a Scraye rent Ltd that were dissolved in February last year, and a Scraye Technologies formed in 2020 with very much the same team of directors. That's by no means an automatic red flag, but certainly warrants a little digging ! Their next accounts are due by the end of the month....