Gamifying Prize-Linked Savings to Improve Financial Literacy

The 2021 FIS Fintech Accelerator follows five highly successful programs produced by FIS and The Venture Center. This year’s Accelerator is conducted entirely virtually. In our FIS Fintech Accelerator Founder Feature series, we’re peeking behind the curtain and getting to know the 2021 cohort founders. We hope you enjoy hearing from the cohort companies – be sure and register for Demo Day on August 26!

For our next Founder Feature, please meet Lindsay Holden, Cofounder and CEO of Long Game. Long Game partners with leading financial institutions to give you prizes. Learn more here. 

1. Where did the idea for Long Game originate?

Long Game came from the idea a behavioral economics mechanism called Prize-Linked Savings, popularized by premium bonds in the UK. The idea is to offer a savings product where some of the interest earned on savings deposits is distributed as prizes based on chance (like a lottery). Instead of earning a few dollars in interest, you earn chances to win a large amount of money. Ask yourself – which is more motivating for you to increase your savings: A few pennies or a few chances to win a million bucks?

Deeply inspired by this concept, we set out to make prize-linked savings accessible to everyone by building a mobile application that centered around this concept, as a way to help people save more and find financial independence.

Today, Long Game works with top banks and uses games to inspire more Americans to love saving and learning about personal finance.

2.What problem does Long Game solve?

We’re here to solve the problem of financial unpreparedness. Today, most Americans have less than $500 in savings. It’s no surprise that personal finances are emotionally fraught for most people. We seek to change this using games and behavioral economics to build a savings app that people love to use and that drives more savings and financial education. 

3. What is your philosophical approach to trying to find a work/life balance?

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. work all the time with little separation or boundaries and take everything extremely personally. Choose carefully! 

4. Who is your favorite entrepreneur and why?

Frida Kahlo because she was daring, loving, and made the world better – more free, aware, inspired. In some ways artists and entrepreneurs are the same, though they use different mediums.

5.What did you decide to apply for the FIS Fintech Accelerator, and what do you hope to gain from it?

We’re excited to get in front of a lot more banks and expand our reach to help more people love saving and learning about finance.

6. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Try Long Game – it’s a fun product and very unlike anything in finance today!

Thanks to Long Game for contributing to the FIS Fintech Accelerator’s Founder Feature series! To visit the 2021 FIS Fintech Accelerator, click here. For questions, please email founders@venturecenter.co. And be sure to come to our virtual Demo Day to see this and other cutting-edge tech solutions in action!