If my memory serves me correctly, BigCrumbs.com introduced a program called CrumbShares last year and it meant that if you earned cash back through BigCrumbs you’d be earning a piece of equity in the company.

What Are CrumbShares?

Each time you earn cash back through BigCrumbs, you’ll also earn an equivalent number of CrumbShares. For instance, when you earn $10 in cash back, you’ll also receive 10 CrumbShares.

Additionally, you will receive a number of CrumbShares equivalent to 10% of the cash back earned by your direct referrals. For example, when your referral earns $20 in cash back, you will earn 2 CrumbShares in addition to any referral commissions.

Hindsight 20/20 and it makes sense why they rolled out the program because I believe they were approached to be bought out as Rakuten has purchased Ebates

The Wall Street Journal published:

TOKYO—Japan’s biggest online shopping mall, Rakuten Inc., has reached a basic agreement to buy U.S. cashback-shopping website operator Ebates for about ¥100 billion ($952 million) to better access U.S. consumers and grow abroad, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

Rakuten is facing competition in their home country and was seeking to expand its market and Ebates fell into their realm. What’s also interesting is that Rakuten also has an affiliate program, it will be very interesting to see what happens with the cashback links on Ebates as well as the rates. Extrapolating from that, we may need to revisit Ebates in the future when we manufacture spend and gift card churn online.