Is Prize-Linked Savings Gambling? An Honest Answer

Is prize-linked savings gambling? The short answer is no

No, prize-linked savings isn’t gambling. The difference comes down to one thing: risk to your principal. When you gamble, you hand over money you can lose, and if you lose, it’s gone. With prize-linked savings you hand over nothing. Every dollar you save is still yours the next morning, and the chance to win costs you nothing. There’s no wager and nothing to lose.

That’s the whole objection answered in a sentence, but it’s the most important question people ask about Lodavo, so it’s worth walking through honestly. Lodavo is Canada’s first prize-linked savings app, and we’d rather you understand exactly why it’s a promotional contest, not gambling, than take our word for it.

What is the actual difference between gambling and prize-linked savings?

Gambling and prize-linked savings can both end with a prize, so it’s fair to ask how they differ. The dividing line is what happens to the money you put in. In gambling, your stake is consumed: buy a lottery ticket and the cost is gone whether you win or lose. In prize-linked savings, your savings are never consumed and never at risk. Here’s the side-by-side.

The US program Save to Win (opens in a new tab), running through credit unions since 2009, makes the same promise: your savings are never at risk and there’s no fee to participate. Your chance of winning doesn’t reduce your principal or your interest. That’s the model Lodavo brings to Canada.

How does Lodavo work without you ever risking a dollar?

Lodavo earns you free draw tickets for doing something you already want to do: saving. You connect the bank account you already have, and every $25 you keep saved is another ticket in that week’s draw. You never deposit money into Lodavo, and you never buy a ticket.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• Your money stays safe. It sits in your own Canadian bank account, earning whatever that account already earns. Lodavo isn’t a deposit account and pays no interest of its own; what it does is reward you for saving.
• The connection is read-only. Lodavo links to the savings account you already use through Plaid (opens in a new tab), which covers over 99% of deposit accounts in Canada. Apps get scoped, read-only access, so your tickets follow what you save and no one can withdraw, charge, move, or transfer a dollar. Your banking password stays between you and your bank.
• The tickets are free. Saving more gets you more tickets in the free weekly draw, where a user can win up to $10,000 and a guaranteed prize of at least $100 goes out every week.

Because you only ever keep and grow your own money, there’s no version of this where you end up worse off. The worst case is that you saved money and didn’t win a draw. You still have the savings.

What makes Lodavo a contest and not a lottery?

In Canada, the line between a legal promotional contest and an illegal lottery is well defined, and Lodavo is built to sit firmly on the contest side. Two design choices put it there, and both are locked into our contest rules.

First, no purchase is necessary. A free alternate method of entry is always available, so winning never depends on spending money. A contest that requires payment to enter starts to look like a lottery, so Lodavo removes payment from the equation entirely.

Second, every winner answers a skill-testing question. Before any winner is paid, they answer a short skill-testing question, usually a small math problem. The Criminal Code treats disposing of property by pure chance as an offence, so a real element of skill is how sponsors keep a draw on the contest side of that line. The question itself appears in no statute, though it has been the convention here for decades, and if you’ve ever entered a Canadian giveaway and been asked to solve a quick equation, you’ve seen it. We unpack the whole thing in why Canadian contests make you do math. The full details, including eligibility and how winners are selected, live on the contest rules page.

Together, those two features (free entry and a skill-testing question) are exactly what separate prize-linked savings from gambling under Canadian rules.

Is prize-linked savings responsible, or does it nudge people the wrong way?

This is the fair version of the gambling worry, and it deserves a straight answer. The concern with gambling is that it can encourage people to risk money they can’t afford and to chase losses. Prize-linked savings is structured so that none of that can happen, because the behaviour it rewards is saving, and there are no losses to chase.

Think about where the incentive points. With a lottery, every dollar you spend is a dollar gone, and the only way to get more entries is to spend more. With Lodavo, every dollar you keep in savings is a dollar you still have, still earning whatever interest your bank pays, and the way to get more tickets is to save more. The reward is wired to a healthy habit, not a costly one. That matters in Canada right now: the household saving rate was just 3.5% in the first quarter of 2026, the lowest since early 2024, according to Statistics Canada (opens in a new tab). Anything that makes setting money aside feel a little more rewarding is pulling in the right direction.

There’s also no pressure to put in more than you want. You can save a little or a lot, withdraw your own money whenever you like, and the prize is always a bonus, never the point. If you ever want a deeper look at the legal and behavioural distinction, our pillar guide to prize-linked savings in Canada goes further.

How can you verify the draws are actually fair?

Fair is easy to claim and harder to prove, so Lodavo shows its work. Winner selection is provably fair, which means the method is published and the outcome can be independently checked rather than taken on faith. You can read exactly how it works on the provably fair page, and you can see every past result on the winning numbers page. Nothing about the draw is hidden.

That transparency is part of why prize-linked savings holds up to the gambling question. A casino has no reason to show you the math. A savings app that wants you to trust it with read-only access to your bank has every reason to.

The bottom line

Prize-linked savings isn’t gambling, because you never risk the money you save. You keep your principal, the money never leaves your own Canadian bank, the app is free, and the weekly draw ticket is a reward for saving rather than a bet you can lose. Add the no-purchase-necessary entry and the skill-testing question, and you have a Canadian promotional contest, not a lottery. The only thing you’re really doing is building a savings habit with a little upside attached.

Ready to see it for yourself? Download Lodavo free, keep saving where you already save, and take a chance at the weekly prize with nothing on the line.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.