Getting paid to keep fit - it sounded great to me. I like to keep fit & who doesn't love to get paid for doing things they love?
Carrot & Stick
The basic idea behind Pact was to incentivise healthy behaviours, namely working out & eating fruits/vegetables. It did this in two ways:
Carrot
For every activity that you committed to and achieved, you received a small reward ($0.09-$0.15.)
Stick
For each activity that you committed to and failed to achieve, you were penalised a minimum of $5
In order to be able to cover the rewards, the system relied on users failing to reach their goal in order to pay out. Technically it was possible for you to receive $0 reward if nobody missed their pact.
Commitment
In order to be eligible for a reward, you needed to attach your Paypal account and authorise payments to be made. Every week you had the opportunity to select your goal - up to 7 gym visits (verified with GPS) or 7 10k step days, taken from the pedometer in your phone.
In addition to the gym rewards, you had the option to select up to 35 fruits/vegetables. You needed to upload images of each one looking as if it were about to be consumed or that it was prepared ready for it.
You can see how you could easily rack up a hefty bill for non-compliance.
What happened?
I honestly believe that the developers gave up on it. The app was buggy - iOS users couldn't participate in the 'veggie' pact, support tickets went unanswered and people lost interest.
In fairness, I never really used it to push myself. I knew that I'd hit 2 days of gym without breaking a sweat (sorry for the pun) and so I never fell foul of the system.
On the flip side of this, perhaps it all worked too well? Like I mentioned, if everyone met their goal - there are no rewards & no cut to be able to support running the venture.
Final payout
In order to avoid charges with Paypal, payouts were set to a minimum of $10 - in light of them closing shop, they removed the limit and allowed everyone to take their rewards:
I'm rich!
Can't say that I'll be really torn up about this but the concept was solid & most people definitely need to be motivated in some way. Fingers crossed for something similar to come around in the future.
Did you have any experience with Pact? I'd love to hear your story.