Dive Brief:

• Wal-Mart's Jet e-commerce unit is shutting down its Jet Anywhere customer rewards program on May 1. "By shutting down Jet Anywhere, we can focus in on adding more great brands to the site and finding our customers more innovative new ways to save," a Jet spokesperson told Retail Dive. 

• The program enables consumers to leave Jet's own site to shop on Jet Anywhere-affiliated sites, then email receipts of their purchases to Jet to collect a percentage of what they spent as "JetCash" earmarked toward future Jet orders. The 600-plus participating Jet Anywhere affiliates include Lands’ End, Bloomingdale’s, Wine.com and Saks Fifth Avenue.

• “Jet Anywhere launched when we were still in the early stages of building our product catalog,” according to Jet. “It was intended to help our shoppers save on items they couldn’t find on Jet. Since then, though, our assortment has grown to over 20 million items and counting — and by shutting down Jet Anywhere, we can focus in on adding more great brands to the site and finding you innovative new ways to save.” Customers can redeem JetCash balances through May 1, 2018.

Dive Insight:

Since Jet was acquired by Wal-Mart last year for $3.3 billion, its assortment theoretically benefits from the breadth and depth of merchandise offered by Wal-Mart (the world's largest and arguably most efficient distributor of consumer goods) itself. It hasn’t been an automatic transfer, though: Wal-Mart in the past year has worked to break down the divisions between its e-commerce and brick-and-mortar operations, a process entailing Jet founder Marc Lore taking over the company’s e-commerce operations as well as a shakeup of its executive ranks. Wal-Mart CIO Karenann Terrell stepped down in February, with Clay Johnson replacing her and given a new mission to focus more on corporate services; several other Wal-Mart e-commerce execs have moved aside for Jet personnel and others as well, most recently as last week. 

It looks like Jet, under Wal-Mart, is making a play for Amazon’s non-Prime customers — those shoppers who are unable or unwilling to pony up $100 per year for membership. That annual fee brings with it plenty of perks, including an entertainment streaming service to rival Netflix, free two-day shipping on many orders, photo storage and other features. But some consumers prefer extra savings over such bonuses, and that’s where Jet’s “secret sauce” algorithm takes over, helping customers tamp down the final price of their orders through a myriad of choices, like slower shipping or foregoing returns.

JetCash was part of that approach, but no more. It’s not clear how many Jet customers were using JetCash (the Jet spokesperson said that the company is unable to release that number), but the process for earning rewards was unwieldy and far from ideal for any e-commerce site, because it entailed leaving Jet's platform to shop elsewhere. Or it simply may have been too unprofitable for Jet to continue. The e-commerce site was still on a campaign to rack up users and introduce itself to the American shopper when JetCash launched, and profitability wasn’t even on the horizon when it was scooped up by Wal-Mart. Certainly Jet Anywhere’s stated mission — bolstering Jet’s assortment — is no longer needed now that it's a Wal-Mart joint.