{"id":11535,"date":"2025-03-26T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11535"},"modified":"2025-03-25T23:35:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T05:35:37","slug":"and-now-its-springtime-for-pepper-in-giftcardland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/26\/and-now-its-springtime-for-pepper-in-giftcardland\/","title":{"rendered":"And Now, It&#8217;s Springtime for Pepper in GiftCardLand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On most days since early 2024, the the <a href=\"https:\/\/gopepper.com\">Pepper platform<\/a> offered bonus promotions on gift card purchases, and those bonuses crept up to the point of absurdity where Walmart, Delta, Home Depot, and other high value gift cards paid 30%. That all changed yesterday when a few things happened:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Tuesday morning bonus drops came hours later than normal<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When they did come, payouts fell from 30x to 18-25x on the best bulk brands<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In-app deal terms specified that even lower bonuses will be coming next week<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They announced through multiple channels that lowered bonus payouts were permanent and that bonuses would be shrinking weekly until the business reached sustainability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Why did Pepper pivot? I think it&#8217;s been obvious since last year that these rates were unsustainable and that Pepper was losing money on every transaction (and oh yeah they just told us so), so a change was needed for the company to continue operating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My most controversial blog post in terms of volume of discussion it produced <a data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"10844\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/17\/whats-the-word-pepper-bird\/\">was that based on how venture funding in big tech wor<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/17\/whats-the-word-pepper-bird\/\">ks, I guessed there was a 50\/50 chance<\/a> that Pepper would either run out of money or that they&#8217;d get new funding in March. I think the latter has <em>probably<\/em> happened and is exactly why we&#8217;re seeing all of these changes, and as a corollary I think that means that it&#8217;s <em>probably<\/em> as safe to use Pepper as most any other startup FinTech at this point. It&#8217;s also possible that it pivoted for an entirely unrelated reason, but I haven&#8217;t thought of another reason that lines up with the public and private data I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regardless of why Pepper changed though, the fact that it did means that likely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Bulk resale rates will creep back up as old, discounted inventory is sold<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Floated coins in Pepper are probably safer than they were<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Pepper will probably have extra runway for new development and enhancements, like maybe launching <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PNkw3GoQEbY\">its AI product that (1) somehow knows your favorite color and shoe size<\/a>, (2) ????, and (3) profit<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>People holding gift cards bought in the last couple of months can soon sell for big profits<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Gift card resellers have a new post from a rando on the internet to debate repeatedly, and empirically, approximately 12 of those debaters won\u2019t even bother to skim the article before debating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s my action, asked nobody? I hit Pepper coin-zero just last week after gradually drawing down my float, but I no longer feel like I need to be there. When resale rates return and deals are profitable, I&#8217;ll be playing the Pepper game like it was Summer 2024. I&#8217;m also buying some cards at the current bonus in anticipation of the bonus falling next week, and I expect I&#8217;ll be holding those cards for a while. Remember though, just because I&#8217;m doing something doesn&#8217;t mean you should do it too; in fact often it means you shouldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"735\" height=\"736\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-9.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11540\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-9.png 735w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-9-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-9-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Pepper&#8217;s Spring form revealed to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On most days since early 2024, the the Pepper platform offered bonus promotions on gift card purchases, and those bonuses crept up to the point<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11535"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11549,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11535\/revisions\/11549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}