Update 9/11/20: Last few days to redeem any points you have.
Update 9/3/20: Just a quick reminder that the Rakuten Marketplace (not the shopping portal) will be closing in a couple of weeks. LoadUp Gifts in the Marketplace appears to have already shut up shop, so hopefully you weren’t planning on redeeming points for gift cards sold by them.
Rakuten announced this evening that they’ll be closing their marketplace, with final orders being accepted on September 15, 2020. Note that this doesn’t affect the Rakuten shopping portal – it’s only the marketplace that’s closing down.
The marketplace was a much smaller version of the kind of marketplaces you find on Amazon and eBay, with companies setting up stores at rakuten.com/shop. There were some sellers on there like LoadUp Gifts who sometimes sold discounted gift cards, particularly for Xbox and Spotify. With those discounts and Rakuten points earned, there were sometimes some decent deals both for personal use and reselling.
Although the marketplace will close on September 15, they’ll be ending accrual of points sooner than that. If you currently have any points, it’d be better to redeem them sooner rather than later because stores in the marketplace might choose to shut up shop before September 15, potentially reducing your points redemption opportunities.
I’ll republish this post in September to give a reminder to use up your points.
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