Available for Android and iOS
Zogo is a legitimate app that takes you through basic financial education models that earn you points, which can then be redeemed for gift cards. There are some important limitations, however, and you'll have to provide your email address to a local bank who may then start sending you ads.
NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT
Instead of having you do micro-jobs or surveys, Zogo is an unusual app that pays you to increase your financial literacy. It's packed with modules on subjects like investing, budgeting, major life milestones and purchases (like retirement and homeownership), and buying insurance, and completing these earns "pineapples" that you can eventually turn in for gift cards.
You can start cashing out at 5000 pineapples, which gets you a $5 USD gift card. You will need to verify your identity with Stripe before cashing out, however (standard photo ID picture upload). You also seem to be limited in how many "free" gift cards you can cash out before having to purchase a subscription to continue doing so, at $50 per year or $5 per month. The app doesn't make this total clear, but recent reviews indicate it's as many as five ... however, the cashout cost increases with each new one pre-subscription.
Gift card options are a broad variety of the major chains. Walmart and Amazon are in there as options along with a lot of the usual restaurants and brick-and-mortar retailers. Apparently it offered an assortment of crypto when it first started out, but I did not see that option available any more - too bad, as it's something that really would have made the smaller dollar amounts more appealing!
SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY
Zogo has been around since 2019 and is legitimate, with thousands of positive reviews and overall excellent ratings on both app stores. It doesn't ask any personal information of you other than an email address to log in, and as mentioned previously the one-time ID check is a third-party verification with Stripe.
One thing that might strike you upon first using is is that it doesn't have ads. So how is it paying out all these gift cards? When you first fire the app up, you'll be asked for your zip code. This gives you a choice of local banks that have signed up as "sponsors," and their logo will then be affixed to various portions of the app. But you'll also notice demographic questions peppered in with the usual test questions, which are presumably used for lead gen for the bank. The bank will then likely send some advertising to your email at some point.
INTERNATIONAL ACCESS
Zogo is available in the US and Canada, but no other countries at the moment. You'll need a US or Canada federal or state photo ID to become eligible to cash out.
STARTING OUT
Zogo is a free (and small) download from the app stores. It's very simple overall and works on older devices, anything from Android 5 on to give you an idea.
The app launches you directly into basic modules, but it presents you with a choice of just the few absolute beginner ones when there are actually many other options. The main thing I was interested in was the crypto and decentralized finance modules, which are in there but take some initial non-intuitive poking around to find. The whole UI could maybe use a tad batter design, something like an omnipresent central menu, but everything is so simple and there are so few options it's never a big issue.
You can work away for as long as you want until you exhaust your supply of four "lives" (in video game style), which are taken for getting test questions wrong. The lives regenerate every four hours, though I don't think you can have more than four at a time.
PROBLEMS WITH ZOGO
At an earning rate that seemingly maxes out at about 200 to 300 points for every 10 minutes or so (so about a few hours per $5 gift card), this is very much a sub-minimum-wage job and even well below a halfway decent survey site. But you are learning on your own schedule with easy-to-manage modules instead of working. The only issue there is that most of the app is extremely basic information, more suited to middle and high schoolers than adults that have already likely been forced to learn it.
FINAL VERDICT - MAY WORK FOR YOU
If you're starting fresh with the concepts, Zogo's modules on general investment options, crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) are solid. It's not like it's something you couldn't also get for free on probably 100 websites or courses, but it's organized well and you can get at least a little financial incentive for working your way through it. It strikes me as being particularly good for teenagers who are new to all these things as it provides at least a little pocket money for their common hangout spots and online points of purchase as a reward.
If you're looking at it as a money-making exercise, it's a little more iffy. You seem to be capped at earning no more than $25 lifetime without paying for a subscription, and that in the form of scattered $5 gift cards. As to whether the paid subscription can actually turn you a profit to be worth the time of first surmounting the $50 annual fee, there are too many variables to say without actually diving in and paying. The educational modules and their reward points will run out eventually, but there remain at least two other ways to earn on an ongoing basis: some kind of competitive trivia game every night at 7 PM EST, and a referral program that provides 1000 pineapple ($1 in cash-out value) per person. $1 per sign-up is actually a pretty good rate, but I'm not clear on whether there's another cap to gift card cash-outs for paid subscribers. Your referral code also has to contain your first name and last initial.
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