The End of Loyalty Points: Turning Your Cashback Into a Shot at a $1M Jackpot

Why points don't work

Markuss Jonans, who left his CEO role at Dyor Exchange to found Cero, says standard rewards never pull users away from their main cards: "people don't really care about 1% cashback, 5% yield, earned programs, random points." He runs the numbers on a 5% yield on a $10,000 balance: after taxes and an annual fee, he puts it at about $300 a year.

MJ calls the Revolut points he collected over two and a half years "useless," worth roughly 400 gigabytes of mobile data. He points instead to Robinhood, which he says grew from a gamified app with confetti on every trade into one of the most powerful financial companies. Host Drew Rogers says the free-stock offer is what converted him to Robinhood.

Pooling rewards into one pot

Cero pools all user money into one vault that decides who gets what based on how people spend, hold and share information. MJ cites the UK's Premium Bonds, which pay lower yield in exchange for a chance to win, as the fastest growing savings product in the UK. Yield on balances is generated in collaboration with Agora.

Payouts come through a coin flip game, built starting in late May, or entries into draws run by licensed partner Megapot, which raffles out a million every day. The Cero Score, from 0 to 1000, grows through holding cash, spending, sharing information and repaying loans, and unlocks credit over time.

Mexico first

Markuss Jonans says Cero picked Mexico because card issuance was easier and it needs to externally authorize transactions, which it does with Rain. He calls the market "extremely underserved" and young, with more than 60% of the population lacking access to credit.