Prize-Linked Savings in the US: How It Works and Where to Open an Account

Prize-linked savings rewards you for saving with entries into cash prize drawings. In the US it comes mostly as a savings account at a credit union, often through a program called Save to Win, and you can open one if your state allows it. What you can’t find right now is a national app, because the apps that offered it have shut down or dropped their savings accounts.

What is prize-linked savings?

Prize-linked savings is a way of saving where each amount you save, often $25, earns an entry into cash prize drawings. Unlike a lottery ticket, which is spent the moment you buy it, the money you save is still yours after the drawing. In the US it usually takes the form of a prize-linked savings account at a credit union or bank, which pays the prizes and often some interest too.

You’ll also see it called a lottery savings account, a save-to-win account or a no-lose lottery.

How does prize-linked savings work?

In the US, you open a prize-linked savings account, often with as little as $25, and the bank or credit union tracks how much you add. Each set amount you add, usually $25, earns an entry into monthly or quarterly drawings for cash prizes. The institution pays for the prizes itself, so nobody else’s deposit funds your prize.

How Save to Win counts entries

Save to Win, the biggest program, gives you one entry for every $25 your balance grows (opens in a new tab) from one month-end to the next, up to 100 entries a month. National drawings happen around the 14th of each month, with bigger ones each quarter. Its 2026 national prizes (opens in a new tab) run from $25 to $5,000, and many credit unions add prizes of their own.

So a balance that sits still stops earning entries. Adding $100 a month earns four entries each month, while leaving $5,000 untouched earns no new entries after the month you deposit it. A few programs count your average balance instead, which suits a lump sum better.

What it can cost you

Many of these accounts are 12-month certificates, and taking money out early can cost a fee or close the account. Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union (opens in a new tab) in South Carolina, for example, charges $25 for one withdrawal during the year and closes the account on the second.

The other cost is interest. BankFive’s Lucky Piggy account (opens in a new tab) pays 0.05% APY, while West Community Credit Union’s Save to Win certificate (opens in a new tab) in Missouri pays 3.65%. For comparison, the FDIC’s national average savings rate (opens in a new tab) was 0.37% in September 2026, and the top online savings accounts (opens in a new tab) paid about 4.25% to 4.50%.

Is prize-linked savings legal in the US?

For accounts at banks and credit unions, yes, in 35 states. The American Savings Promotion Act (opens in a new tab), signed on December 18, 2014, removed the federal ban on banks running savings raffles, but only where state law allows them. Credit unions need a state law too. So whether you can open a prize-linked savings account depends on the state you live in.

Before 2014, federal banking law barred national and state banks from running any kind of lottery. The act carved out a “savings promotion raffle,” a contest where the only thing you give for a chance to win is a deposit in a savings account. Federal law never barred credit unions the same way, but states generally ban private lotteries, so each state had to pass its own exception. Michigan went first, and its credit unions launched Save to Win in 2009.

Those exceptions cover raffles, where your deposit is your entry. A few programs ran as sweepstakes instead and were open in all 50 states. Walmart’s Prize Savings and Truist’s Long Game were two of them, and neither runs today.

Which states allow prize-linked savings accounts?

By the count of Commonwealth (opens in a new tab), the nonprofit that helped design Save to Win and championed the 2014 act, 34 states had passed a law by May 2021. Pennsylvania (opens in a new tab) became the 35th in 2022.

• Banks and credit unions (30 states): Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
• Credit unions only (5 states): Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Rhode Island.
• No law yet (15 states): Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

North Carolina has let banks offer these accounts since December 2019, and Indiana’s law still covers only credit unions. A law doesn’t mean a bank or credit union near you offers an account, so check the programs below.

Is prize-linked savings gambling?

Legally, a prize-linked account is a raffle, which is why states had to pass exceptions to their lottery bans. In practice, what sets it apart from gambling is what you risk. You don’t pay for an entry, and the deposit that earns it is still yours after the drawing. The costs are the ones above: lower interest, and at some credit unions a fee if you withdraw early. With gambling, the cost is the money you bet, and Americans lose about $160 billion a year that way.

Where can you open a prize-linked savings account?

At a participating credit union or bank, usually only if you’re a member and live in a state that allows prize-linked savings. These are the programs we found open to new savers as of October 2026, grouped by who runs them, not ranked. Lodavo publishes this guide and its Canadian edition. Our app is live in Canada and isn’t on the list, because Americans can’t sign up for it yet.

In the table, “$25 of growth” means one entry for every $25 your balance grows from one month-end to the next.

How to find one near you

Save to Win’s locator searches by ZIP code. It doesn’t publish a list of states or credit unions, so search where you live and where you work. The Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York programs list their credit unions on their own sites.

Before you open one, check whether you can join the credit union, whether the account locks your money up for 12 months, and what rate it pays. Credit unions limit who can join, often to people who live or work in certain areas, but some are open to almost anyone. InTouch Credit Union (opens in a new tab) in Texas comes closest to a national option. Anyone can join by becoming a “friend” of its foundation, and it says residents of 30 states can open its Save to Win certificate.

Is there a prize-linked savings app in the US?

Not right now. Yotta, PrizePool and Truist’s Long Game all offered prize-linked savings in an app, and all of them have closed or stopped offering savings. Yotta, the best known, had moved its savers’ money to Synapse, a middleman that went bankrupt in April 2024 and left customers unable to reach their funds.

• Yotta. California’s financial regulator found that at least 18,155 Californians lost access to at least $28 million after Synapse failed, and fined Yotta $1 million (opens in a new tab) in May 2026. Yotta’s app now runs free sweepstakes games, not savings accounts, and its former savers are still waiting on a federal payout.
• PrizePool. It told customers it was being acquired, stopped new deposits in August 2024, closed accounts in September (opens in a new tab) and sent leftover money back to customers’ linked bank accounts.
• Truist Long Game. Truist bought the app in 2022 and relaunched it in 2023 as a savings game tied to Truist accounts. Its page and app store listings are gone.
• Walmart MoneyCard Prize Savings. The prepaid card’s prize drawing for savers was once the biggest program by money saved. Its last published rules (opens in a new tab) ran from May 2022 to April 2023.

Yotta’s case shows a limit of deposit insurance. It protects you only when an insured bank fails, not when a company in between does. In the FDIC’s words (opens in a new tab), non-bank companies “are never FDIC-insured.” A prize-linked account opened directly at an insured bank or credit union doesn’t have that gap.

Lodavo, which publishes this guide, is a prize-linked savings app that never holds your money. The more you save, the more tickets you get for weekly cash prize draws.

Is there a US version of Premium Bonds?

No. The US Treasury’s savings bonds pay interest with no prize draw, and Congress has never created a prize bond. The closest thing in the US is a prize-linked savings account, run by a credit union or bank rather than the government.

Premium Bonds (opens in a new tab) are run by NS&I, a savings organization backed by the UK Treasury, and have been sold since 1956. They pay no interest. Instead, each £1 bond gets an equal chance in a monthly draw with prizes from £25 to £1 million, tax-free in the UK. From the September 2026 draw, the prize fund rate is 4.35% and the odds are 21,000 to 1 for each £1 bond. You can hold from £25 to £50,000.

The US savings bonds you can buy instead, I bonds and EE bonds, pay interest only. EE bonds (opens in a new tab) bought now are guaranteed to double in value if you hold them for 20 years.

Can Americans buy Premium Bonds?

Only with a UK bank account, and NS&I itself warns it may not work. It sells to anyone 16 or older with a UK bank account, but says on its page for savers abroad (opens in a new tab) that “the US has strict gaming and lottery laws which mean that it might not be possible or practical to hold Premium Bonds while in the US.” If you do hold them as a US citizen or resident, your prizes are taxable in the US even though the UK doesn’t tax them, because the IRS taxes your worldwide income (opens in a new tab). Foreign-account reporting rules, such as the FBAR (opens in a new tab), may apply too.

Is prize-linked savings worth it?

It depends on the rate you give up and on whether a prize gets you saving. A prize-linked account that pays much less than a high-yield savings account costs you that difference in interest. If you aren’t saving at all, a prize is a reason to start, and that’s where the research finds prize-linked savings helps most.

Say you keep $2,000 saved for a year. At 0.05%, you’d earn about $1 in interest. At 4.25%, a top online savings rate in September 2026, you’d earn about $85. That $84 is what the prize drawings cost you in an account like BankFive’s. In West Community Credit Union’s certificate at 3.65%, the gap is about $12. The trade doesn’t apply to Lodavo, because your savings keep earning their usual rate.

When Save to Win launched at eight Michigan credit unions in 2009, savers opened 11,666 accounts and put away $8.6 million in the first year, according to the program’s 2009 report (opens in a new tab), and 56% of those surveyed said they hadn’t saved regularly before. A study of a South African bank’s prize-linked account (opens in a new tab) found that people who used it bought fewer lottery tickets and didn’t cut back on their other savings.

If you already keep savings in a high-yield account

Moving your savings will likely cost you more in interest than the prizes are worth, unless you find a prize account that pays close to your rate. Another option is to leave your savings where they earn the most and add a small amount to a prize account each month, since most programs count what you add.

If you’re not saving yet

This is who prize-linked savings was built for. You can start with $25, and each month you add to it earns more entries. On a 12-month certificate, the fee for taking money out early also makes the savings harder to dip into.

If you play the lottery

A prize-linked account gives you a drawing to look forward to without spending money on a ticket. The prizes are smaller than a lottery jackpot, and the biggest we found is $50,000.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. State law and each account’s official rules decide the details.