On 27 March 2026, Shopkick stopped working. There was no email, no notice in the app, and no wind-down period. Users opened it to find nothing, and the kicks they had been collecting — some for years — were simply gone.
It is the single most useful thing that has happened in this category in years, because it answers a question most people never think to ask: what is a reward balance, legally and practically, if the company holding it decides to stop?
What actually happened to Shopkick
Shopkick had run for sixteen years. Its owner, Trax Retail, pulled it with employees reportedly told only hours ahead. The app came out of both app stores, the website went dark, and references to it were removed from Trax's own site. Unredeemed kicks became unredeemable, and there was no process to appeal to. Gift cards already redeemed, where people had saved the codes, still worked — those had already stopped being a balance and become a thing you owned.
That last detail is the whole lesson in miniature. A redeemed card was property. An unredeemed balance was a promise, and the promise ended with the company.
The formal ending came two months later: Shopkick, Inc. filed for relief under chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code on 29 May 2026, in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, case number 26-10877, and a notice to that effect is the only thing shopkick.com serves today. Chapter 7 is liquidation, not reorganization, so nothing is coming back. If you are here looking for somewhere to put the habit instead, we have written up the apps like Shopkick and which part of it each one actually replaces.
It does not have to go that way
Compare it with Dosh, which closed in February 2025. Dosh announced the closure ahead of time, published a page explaining it, and set a final date to earn and a later one to withdraw. Then the part that mattered: it dropped its minimum withdrawal to one cent, so that any balance at all could be taken out. People who read a single email got their money.
Same outcome for the business, opposite outcome for the user. Nothing forced either choice. That is worth sitting with: whether you keep your balance is decided by how a company behaves on the way out, at a moment when it has the least to gain from behaving well.
Why a balance is fragile by design
Coins, points and kicks are not money held for you. There is no account holding your cash, no insurance behind it, and in most cases nothing in the terms obliging anyone to convert it after service ends. It is a record in a company's database saying what you would be owed if you asked today. As we set out in how free reward apps make money, the money funding it arrives from advertisers continuously — so when the business stops, the flow funding those balances stops with it.
This is not an argument against reward apps. It is an argument against hoarding inside one, which is a habit these apps quietly encourage: big round thresholds, streak bonuses, and tier systems all reward you for leaving a balance in place.
How to hold a balance so you never lose one
- Cash out at the threshold, every time. Not at twice it, not at a round number that feels satisfying. The first moment you are allowed to withdraw is the moment your balance is worth the most it will ever certainly be worth.
- Treat a high minimum as a risk, not a goal. The longer an app makes you carry a balance, the more of your earnings are exposed at any moment. A low threshold is a feature.
- Redeem gift cards and save the code. Shopkick users who had done this kept their value. A code in your notes app does not depend on the issuer's app still existing.
- Watch for the quiet signs. Support going unanswered, payouts slowing, an app not updated in a year, rewards catalogs shrinking. None is proof, but together they are a reason to withdraw rather than accumulate.
- Do not concentrate. Four small balances across four apps lose less to any single closure than one large balance in the app you like best.
The honest version for our own apps
We are a small developer, and it would be worth nothing for us to tell you we will certainly be here in ten years. Nobody can promise that, and the companies that did were not being straight with you. What we can tell you is how ours are built and what we would do.
All four of our apps reach a first cash-out at 2,000 coins, which is $2.00 — a deliberately low bar, reachable in about a month of ordinary use. Every payout after your first is 5,000 coins, or $5.00, because PayPal's per-transfer fee takes a large share of a $2.00 payment and fewer, larger payments leave more of the money with you. It exists so you can take money out regularly instead of building a balance you are frightened to lose. Our advice for our own apps is the same as for anyone else's: redeem when you hit it. And if we ever did wind an app down, the right way to do it is the Dosh way — notice first, a window to withdraw, and the minimum dropped so nothing is stranded.
You can see what each app pays for and how the coins work on how rewards work, or side by side on which of our apps pays you best.