Is 4.50% APY (and More) Worth $99/year? A Look at PrizePool Stacked

I am generally a fan of prize-linked accounts and I have written an extensive review on PrizePool, mentioned how people are making thousands of dollars on Yotta, and gone over the odds of getting debit card swipe reimbursed in these platforms. PrizePool has been gearing up to publically launch “PrizePool Stacked”, a subscription that unlocks additional benefits, such as increased APY and increase odds of wins on debit card swipes.

The Complete Benefits of PrizePool Stacked

PrizePool Stacks is a subscription that is set to cost $10/month (or $120/year). However, currently, they are offering a yearly subscription for $99. Here is the complete list of benefits (see figure below for how it compares with fee-free PrizePool):

1. APY boost: 4.25% 4.40%, 4.50%
2. Increase odds of getting a debit card swipe reimbursed
   • 1:10 odd for 5% cash back (a.k.a. 10% chance of getting 5% cash back)
   • 1:200 odd for 100% cash back (a.k.a. 0.5% chance of getting 100% cash back)
3. 20% of referrals winning
4. 2x tickets per $1 per day held with PrizePool
5. 200x tickets per $1 spent with PrizePool debit card

Is there a clear over the top amazing top deal? Not really. You can find high APYs with other platforms such as Juno and Primis. The referral boost is nice if your referred user wins big (see: one of you won $11,000 in PrizePool) but I haven’t had a big referral boost in quite a while. It might be partly due to the economy and interest rate hikes as users are looking to move funds elsewhere. Anyway, if you have a few family members you can refer (or have referred) then maybe doubling your kickback each week will be nice, however, that benefit by itself is likely not worth $99.

A Deeper Look at Debit Card Odds

I think the interesting bits are the debit card odds. With each swipe, you have a 0.5% chance of getting the whole thing reimbursed or a 10% chance of getting 5% reimbursed. To understand what this means, I ran an experiment where $100 charges were made 10,000 times. The end result was very roughly around 1%. You should think of this as what PrizePool will roughly pay to their entire userbase. Your individual cashback could be much higher or lower. For example, it is entirely possible for you to make five $1000 charges and get each of those fully reimbursed (although the odds are fairly small).

Is a roughly 1% cashback card worth a $99 annual fee? Maybe you were using Fold for all the wrong reasons and maybe that wrong reason isn’t working on Fold anymore so maybe this is the card you want to try.

Maybe 200 tickets per $1 will push you to the edge. Suppose you spend $10k/week on this card (cough), then you are essentially making 2 million tickets which is kinda ridiculous and may put you ahead big time on weekly drawings. Alternatively, you could burn 2,000 tickets at a time on their PrizeWheel feature (I think you can use this feature as many times as you want) which gives you odds of winning cash (or tickets) per spin. See two images below for samples of winning (yes, the same users are, within a short duration of time, using this feature over and over again).

Closing Thoughts

PrizePool continues to find new ways to appeal users (and make money) which is a good thing. I also comend them for no longer having crypto thing involved in their app. Anyway, overall I don’t think Stacked has one killer feature that makes it worth it but when you collectively look at all the features, well, there may be something…