SL: What if cashback is a scam?
Preview: What if it is rewiring your brain?
I used to think that cashback and discount gave us the same satisfaction. Money saved is money saved, right? But then one day I noticed something weird. Whenever I got a discount, I would forget about it soon, but when a cashback landed into my account? It felt like I have just won something.
It turned out that the feeling wasn’t just random - it was by its design. It is called Loss Aversion - a behavioral bias where we feel the pain of loss twice as immensely as the joy of gaining something. And super.money has turned it into their unique selling proposition.
If you have ever used Google Pay, PhonePe, or Paytm, you know the deal. They will give you scratch cards, lucky draws or random discounts. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. And then came, CRED, where you actually get cashback but we can use it reduce in our credit bills or utility bills.
super.money stood out in the game. They have designed and marketed everything on a simple insight, people don’t want the chance of winning. They want certainty. They launched their business on August 2024, and in a span of 8 months, they are already India’s 5th largest UPI platform.
What set them apart?
It’s not a feature, it is a mental mode in action.
If you buy something for ₹500 and if there is a ₹50 discount, you pay ₹450. There is no dopamine hit, a small moment of joy, and a slightly lower number on your bill.
But if you get ₹50 cashback? That is like money coming back to you and it feels like free money.
Guess what? Apparently our brain love that. Psychologists call it as “mental accounting” we see cashback as something different, like a separate income rather than a discount, making us more likely to spend it.