High street staple Blokker is launching a new loyality programme for customers, allowing them to build up a very minor stake in the company as a reward, the Financieele Dagblad said on Thursday.

The ‘blokjes Blokker’ programme is to be formally presented at the end of the month, and has been devised together with a company called Bits of Stock that develops loyalty programmes based on the concept of fractional share ownership, the FD said.

Fractional shares are partial shares of a company’s stock and have become increasingly popular in the US, but investing in them via the stock exchange is not yet legal in the Netherlands, the FD said.

A spokesman for the company said the new programme is not connected to plans to eventually float Blokker and cannot be seen as an investment. Instead, consumers will be able to save up for share certificates, which will be issued by a trust office.

Customers already get points for every €5 they spend and, the spokesman told the FD, will be able to exchange 20 points for a certificate, which is equivalent to one sixteenth of a Blokker share.

Company chief executive Michiel Witteveen, who bought Blokker from the Blokker family last year, told the FD that the aim is to ensure the certificates have value in the long term.

Blokker has been loss making since 2014. The retail chain has 474 outlets in the Netherlands, plus 77 franchise stores, and 128 in Belgium and Luxembourg.