7/29/2023 Update: Yotta has updated its section to address low odds on peer-to-peer transactions. Click here to see the FAQ page or see the screenshot below:
Over a year ago I wrote I wrote “how are people making thousands of dollars with Yotta Debit Card” and it picked up some traction among the miles community. Until today, it remained a featured (think pinned) post in this blog. I enjoy getting emails/comments/DMs from readers who say “I won a big one because I did that after reading your post”. Well, here is a post suggesting that it may not be as straightforward anymore.
Recently I made another post titled “Yotta pays you for making direct deposits. Is it too good to be true?” In a true TravelinPoints fashion, I had moved nearly all of my direct deposits to Yotta. Because I work at various places, direct deposits were frequently hitting the account but pretty much none were generating dollars. This raised some eyebrows but it was still believable based since based on Yotta’s transparency page about 5% of the direct deposits had won some cash.
But said page also mentioned that 47% of the debit card purchase had some cash winning. In other words, the odds of winning (or not winning) cash on any given purchase is about 50/50. This would mean, it is a pretty solid idea to make big purchases (which is in contrast to the idea of making small purchases to compensate for low odds of winning). But, nothing happened. Nearly no wins.
Join me on Yotta using my username LUCKISYOURS and we’ll both get a Loot Box with up to $100 and 1 MILLION tickets into daily number drawings with prizes up to $1m.
https://join.withyotta.com/LUCKISYOURS
Also, get a 1,000 bonus ticket after spending $2,000 within 4 months of getting your Yotta debit card.
So, I said let’s do a whole bunch of small purchases ($10 – $100) and if I am consistently not getting wins then there is a high probability that something is up. Here is ONE example of a trial I ran which consisted of 18 consecutive swipes. If you ask CHATGPT what the odds of me winning some money are, it will say 99.9997% (disclaimer: I am of course making a big assumption that each swipe has a 47% chance of winning some cash prize).
Yet, the abovementioned 18 swipes (equivalent to opening 18 debit card boxes) resulted in exactly 0 dollars won.
So, in a quest to understand what was happening, I ran into the following explanation from Yotta’s official account on Reddit:
Yes boxes are complicated, and odds are not the same for every transaction.Debit and credit card transactions earn different interchange revenues based on factors such as transaction category, size, online versus in person, PIN or no PIN etc.
The differences can be substantial, and the factors that go into it are complicated and frequently changing from Visa and MasterCard. Box odds are based on this construct.
Interchange percentages are generally lower for bigger transactions, which is why you see lower win rates on bigger transactions. We want the feature to support a high frequency of win to make Boxes exciting while maintaining a sustainable business model.
Now, I don’t think all “easy money” has dried up but you may have to do some trials to figure out which merchant pays them enough for them to pay you some kickback (they won’t show you where these debit card winners used the card like they did before).
Closing Thoughts
So, there you have it. Although Yotta may have a transparency page, to get some insight into what is happening, you actually need to track down their Reddit post with 7 upvotes.
If you are looking for an alternative, I might suggest PrizePool, which also has a debit card reimbursement system. I have extensively reviewed PrizePool here and written about their recent 4.40% APY membership and debit card changes here.
Having said all that, for now, I will stick with my plan to continue doing direct deposits at Yotta and then use their debit card to eventually move funds elsewhere.
