From 1994 to 1999, webmerchants would give away points that could be redeemed as gift certificates or transformed into rebates in order to buy more products.
As thoses processes were difficult to manage by the merchants, third party websites appeared, providing merchants with safe outsourced reward system against a small percentage of the money managed.
The systems developed by e.g. Mypoints.com Ebates.com CashbackToYou.co.uk would offer rebates when you were shopping at a large number of webmerchants.
Although consumers would find points interesting, they were more and more interested by being rewarded directly with cash.
At the end of 1999, the points big companies started restructuring, with Mypoints and Cybergold merging and becoming more direct marketing structures than traditional points managers. Beenz.com, another popular points manager, sold its business to Carlson Marketing of Minneapolis, WI in 2002.
Meanwhile, new cash oriented Business models appeared, with systems like Stockback, promising to offer customers shares of a fund. Unfortunately, with all world’s stock exchanges plunging by mid 2000, this idea did not provide customer satisfaction as expected.
Cashback systems today
A new generation of cashback systems appeared in 2000 with systems like Upromise that helped customers save for their children's college, or like Babymint that helped customers save for their retirement. These programs are very popular and have attracted millions of members.
Today, lots of cashback systems are appearing in Europe, with companies like CashCash or Ebuyclub.com offering cashback rewards for Internet shoppers at hundreds of merchants. Within three minutes you can subscribe to the service and use it as often as you like. Cashback can be credited to your bank account upon request.
