Many airlines may go bust and the programs with them.

Many airline programs will end in the manner of Green Stamps, all while providing a lesson that a rebate currency programs may only be worth mass customer participation while the rebate currency is managed well enough to be consistently rewarding and provide a decent store of value for those who have collected the currency over many years. The less long-term storage and transactional value the spend-related rebated currency has (or is suspected to have), the more likely a given rebate currency is going to lose ground to currencies that have way more customer confidence. Which currency generally deserves the most customer confidence? The currency in which you earn your income, buy most of your goods and services and pay your taxes — and that’s not airline miles — or a currency pegged to another currency in which you can do so when relocating or sourcing externally.

Cash-back — even in electronic form — rebate currency as king, queen and princelings is the most likely form of rebated currency to have its store of value way better protected by authorities of various sorts than airline miles, hotel points and the like. The runner-up to cash, in terms of store of value protection at least, would be proprietary bank loyalty program points.

Green Stamps, in one form or another, lasted or came back over many decades, but at some point enough consumers wised up to the gimmicks of such program and moved on by dumping it, ignoring or even joking about it. There is a lesson in there for those who invest(ed) their business in airline loyalty programs.