Shopmium Shuts Down – Again

The topsy-turvy history of Shopmium has taken another turn, as the savings app is calling it quits for the second time in seven years. For good this time, it seems.

“In November, Shopmium is closing its doors and handing the keys to Checkout 51, where all Shopmium offers will permanently live,” Shopmium users in the U.S. have been informed.

The news is as unsurprising as it is inevitable, since both Shopmium and Checkout 51 have been under the same company’s ownership for the past year. The precursor to Neptune Retail Solutions bought Checkout 51 back in 2015. A few months later, Coupons.com founder Quotient Technology bought the Europe-based Shopmium, shut down the U.S. version, then relaunched it shortly before Neptune bought Quotient last year, and found itself with two similar and duplicative savings apps.

“When we acquired Quotient last September, Shopmium had just been launched,” Neptune CEO Bill Redmond told Coupons in the News. “Much smaller and undeveloped compared to Neptune’s owned and operated Checkout 51 business, it made sense to transfer Shopmium U.S. users to Checkout 51. Going forward, Neptune’s owned and operated cash back platforms will continue to be Checkout 51 in the U.S. and Canada, and Shopmium in France and the UK.”

Checkout 51 is indeed the stronger and more stable of the two, with more support from its owner who has more invested in it, more name recognition, and more users than Shopmium, which was largely something of an afterthought even to its previous owner. According to figures from the mobile app market research company AppMagic, Checkout 51 has been downloaded more than 12 million times in the U.S. and Canada, compared to Shopmium’s comparatively paltry two million.

But they both lag behind their top competitors, Ibotta and Fetch, which boast more than 50 million users each. So combining the user bases of its two savings apps could be the best way for Neptune to continue to compete in the space.

Shopmium had a checkered history anyway. Founded in France in 2011, it launched in the U.S. in 2014 amid a glut of cash back apps – remember SavingStar? MobiSave? Snap by Groupon? Quotient bought Shopmium a year later, made changes that users hated, then stripped it for parts by incorporating many of its features into the Coupons.com app and shutting Shopmium down (while continuing to operate it in France and the UK). When it sold Coupons.com a couple of years ago, Quotient was forced to make an about-face, shutting down the Coupons.com app and resurrecting Shopmium.

That lasted all of a year before Neptune took over, and another year after that before Neptune pulled the plug, which is where we find ourselves today.

Despite its relative unpopularity, Shopmium did have some things going for it that will be lost in the transfer to Checkout 51. Its biggest selling point was the ability to claim immediate cash back as you earned it on each individual offer, instead of having to first build up a balance. Checkout 51, in comparison, requires you to earn at least $20 before you can cash out.

But Checkout 51 is emphasizing the benefits of the switch, pointing out that “there are MORE ways to save on Checkout 51 like on gas, prescriptions and through surveys, online offers and more.” Plus, new users of Checkout 51 who sign up using the same email as their Shopmium account will receive a $5 bonus offer. Existing Checkout 51 users won’t, but they are likely to see more offers at least, as “all of the offers that were previously on Shopmium will now be on Checkout 51.”

Shopmium will officially close up shop on November 14th. And unless someone someday decides the third time’s the charm – this time, for U.S. shoppers, Shopmium’s second life is likely to be its last.