Debit card company promises to pay your bill … sometimes: ‘Buy now, pay maybe’

A viral marketing campaign has consumers wondering what they are giving up in exchange for a debit card that sometimes foots the bill.

The new card comes from Tuyo, a company that promises to eliminate random charges from a user’s debit card in part or entirely.

‘Slot machines are more predictable.’

The online cryptocurrency wallet app is already unique in the fact that it acts as an instant converter of cryptocurrency into fiat, meaning its customers can use it as a payment method online or at the cash register, where the account automatically converts crypto holdings into the appropriate currency.

At the same time, the company is pushing out a new feature that rewards users by paying for their purchases — but it’s all random.

“We created a card that sometimes doesn’t charge you,” Tuyo wrote in its viral X post. “Buy Now, Pay Maybe.”

The company described the feature as a discretionary discount applied at its sole discretion, which can result in customers getting a reduced amount “as low as $0.00” for any transaction.

Nothing is required by the user to participate, other than to make purchases, of course.

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Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The company’s terms of service explain that the feature can be revoked from users at any time and that users should not begin spending flagrantly in hopes that their purchases would be covered.

The latter is exactly the issue some readers have taken with the feature, particularly financial corporate attorney Ariel Givner. In a post read over 1 million times, Givner described the card as “worse” than gambling.

“Slot machines are more predictable,” she wrote. “This one’s going to result in a whole lot of overdraft fees for Tuyo because inevitably people will get addicted and spend more than they should ‘because this one might be free!'”

She added, “We already have a society addicted to gambling. This will only exacerbate the issue.”

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Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

There are arguments to be made that the card operates much like modern online video games, too. In the same way that many new games release paid content in incremental windows referred to as “seasons,” Tuyo also uses seasons to push reward multipliers.

The multipliers are boosted amounts for the reward points program, with the intention that TUYO points could turn into a cryptocoin at some point.

Tuyo promises no monthly or yearly fees, with a $10,000 per day spending limit.

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