By Bo Starr, Co-CEO of Grifin. Last verified August 17, 2026.

Bumped shut down in December 2022 and no company took over its stock-rewards program. Grifin is the closest thing operating today, but it works differently: Bumped gave you free stock funded by brands, while Grifin invests your own money into the brands you shop at, so it's a successor to the idea rather than to the deal.

If you're here because you had a Bumped account, or you loved the concept and want it back, here's the full record and an honest map of what exists now, including options that aren't ours.

What exactly happened to Bumped?

Bumped launched the "get stock where you shop" category. You linked your cards, picked loyalty brands, and when you shopped there, Bumped's brand partners funded small stock rewards into a brokerage account. It was a genuinely loved idea. The rewards programs, including Shop Now and the shopping extension, ended in July 2022, and the company wound down entirely that December. Customer brokerage accounts remained at Apex Clearing, the firm that had held them all along, with service limited to liquidating positions or transferring them to another broker. There was no acquisition and no successor product. The shutdown appears to have come down to the business model: brand-funded free stock means the merchants pay for every share, and not enough merchants stayed in.

If I had a Bumped account, where is my stock?

If you never moved it, the shares would have been handled through the wind-down process at Apex Clearing, the clearing firm behind Bumped's accounts. After the December 2022 shutdown, account holders could liquidate their positions or transfer them out to a brokerage of their choice. If you think you left money behind, start with your old emails from Bumped for account details, then contact Apex directly, and check your state's unclaimed property database if the trail has gone cold. Three and a half years on, small abandoned balances often end up escheated to the state, which sounds alarming but just means the state is holding it for you to claim.

Is Grifin the same thing as Bumped?

No, and the difference is worth being precise about. Bumped was a rewards program: brands paid for the stock, and you got it free for your loyalty. Grifin is an investing app: the money is yours, moved from your own bank account into fractional shares of the brands you spend at. Here's how it works today. Grifin links your bank accounts and cards through Plaid, reads your transactions, and automatically buys fractional shares of every publicly traded brand you spend at. It opens a real brokerage account, verifies your identity, funds by ACH, and places live fractional trades. There's no stock picking. It costs a flat single-digit monthly subscription. So the honest framing: same insight (the brands in your daily life are companies you can own), opposite funding source. If what you loved about Bumped was specifically the free part, Grifin won't replace that, and nothing currently on the market does.

Will Grifin shut down the way Bumped did?

Fair question, and the reason the business models matter. Bumped needed brands to keep writing checks; Grifin doesn't. Members pay a flat subscription and invest their own money, which means the economics don't depend on merchant partnerships staying funded. The track record so far: members have invested more than $47.5 million through the app, it holds 4.5 stars across 6,600+ App Store ratings, and the members who make three automatic deposits in their first 32 days keep their funded account at a 94 percent rate. No one can promise you any fintech will exist forever, and we won't insult you by trying. What we can say is that the specific failure that took Bumped down isn't a failure mode Grifin shares. And because Grifin accounts are real brokerage accounts, the stock is yours either way: transferable out to another broker, the same protection Bumped users ultimately relied on.

What are the alternatives if Grifin isn't the right fit?

Plenty of former Bumped users don't want a subscription app, and they have good options. If you just want to own the brands you love and are happy to buy them yourself, Fidelity offers fractional shares from $1 with no monthly fee, and Cash App Investing lets you buy slices of individual stocks for free inside an app you may already have. Stash's Stock-Back debit card is the last true stock-rewards mechanic standing, paying 0.125% to 1% back in stock on card purchases, though it requires Stash's $12-a-month plan and its own debit card. And if you were in it purely for free rewards with none of your own money at stake, a flat 2% cash-back credit card is the boring, correct answer, and you can invest the cash anywhere.

So is Grifin the replacement or not?

For the idea, yes. Grifin is where "buy stock where you shop" lives now: automatic, tied to your real spending, across every public brand you buy from rather than a handful of enrolled partners. For the free-stock deal Bumped offered, no, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Decide which half of Bumped you actually miss. If it's the ownership habit, that's us. If it's the free shares, keep the cash-back card and pour one out for a great idea that couldn't pay for itself.

Facts about other apps checked against their own pricing pages on August 17, 2026.