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0.20%
APY
$0
Fee
$0
Minimum deposit to open
APY | 0.20% |
---|---|
Fee | $0 |
Minimum deposit to open | $0 |
Minimum balance to earn interest | $0 |
Interest compounding | Daily |
Monthly transaction limit | 6 |
Review by
Michael Benninger is a personal finance writer at Finder. He is a former credit analyst and longtime freelancer whose articles have been published by Intuit, Blinkist, Business Insider and the Los Angeles Times. Michael graduated from Rowan University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. When he’s not writing, you can usually find him watching movies, enjoying the outdoors or boarding planes to distant destinations.
Ultimately, a Yotta savings account offers a similar thrill to playing the lottery, but rather than throwing away money on losing tickets, you’ll deposit those funds into an FDIC-insured savings account.
But if you don’t win big, your money’s likely to grow faster elsewhere. If you don’t want to try your luck, explore other high-yield accounts for a more predictable savings option.
Prize-linked savings programs like Yotta have existed in the UK since the 1950s, but this account is among the first in the US. Here’s how it works:
For every $25 you deposit in a Yotta account, you get a recurring lottery ticket each week. For example, if you deposit $1,000, you’ll get 40 tickets every week as long as those funds remain in your account. For each ticket, you can pick seven numbers — similar to a Powerball or Mega Millions game. If you don’t select any numbers, Yotta will choose them for you.
Every night at 9 p.m. ET, a third-party insurance company uses a random number generator to draw a single number for the Yotta lottery. Weekly contests begin on Monday and end Sunday. If the seven numbers drawn during a week match the numbers on any of your tickets, you could win anywhere from $0.10 to $10 million.
You’ll need an iPhone, iPad or Android device to open a Yotta savings account:
To open a Yotta savings account, you’ll need to meet the following requirements:
Provide the following details to open your account:
Deposits you make using the Yotta app are securely handled by Plaid, a financial services startup owned by Visa.
A few perks to opening a Yotta account:
The odds of hitting the jackpot are one in 3,277,899,625. The fine print states that if you do hit the jackpot, you’ll actually receive a lump-sum payout of $5.8 million. That’s the present cash value of $10 million based on a 40-year annuity. While that sounds suspicious, it’s a common practice for lottery organizers to use annuity values in their marketing materials.
Yes. There can be multiple winners, but only if the jackpot is over $999. If the prize is over $999, then the cash is split among the the winners.
While Yotta offers an interesting and fun approach to savings, it still has some drawbacks:
The only way to deposit funds into your Yotta savings account is by tapping Get More Tickets in the app and entering the amount of money you wish to transfer. You can also set up recurring deposits on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.
To withdraw funds back into your linked account, navigate to the Settings screen in the app, and tap Withdraw. As with most savings accounts, you’re limited to making six monthly withdrawals. Withdrawals will take two to three days.
You have a daily limit of $10,000 and a monthly limit of $40,000 for deposits and withdrawals.