Gym-Pact' Gives App Users Financial Incentive to Hit the Gym

It's four days into the new year. Have you kept your resolution to go to the gym? If not, there's an app that will provide some financial incentive to use the membership you're already paying for -- Gym-Pact charges users when they don't go but pays when they do.

With Gym-Pact, Gizmodo reports, users set a "pact" to go to the gym using the app. It has to be at least one day per week. If the pact is broken, the user is charged for every missed session -- how much is determined by the user. But, users are rewarded for good behavior, getting paid for the weeks they do hit the treadmill or pump some iron. Here's how the monetary side works according to Gym-Pact:

To the GymPacters who made it to the gym! Every week, we will pay out cash rewards to those who met their Pact from the Stakes paid by people who didn’t quite make it. Rewards can be cashed out like via Paypal. We think if you put real money on the line, you should get real rewards.

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Every Sunday night, we calculate how much was paid by those who didn't get to the gym that week. The money is then divided among those who made their Pact, based on the number of days committed (i.e., 3 days Pact = 3 portions). Cash prizes are not related to your Stakes, which are for your own personal motivation.

But how does it know whether users have really checked into the gym or not? When they check into the gym using the app on their iOS phones, the program confirms with GPS that they are in fact at a gym.

According to Gizmodo, Gym-Pact has more than 40,000 gyms and can add a gym if it is not in its database.

Watch the trailer for this app:

Gym-Pact states that the pilot of the app had a 90 percent success rate in incentivizing users to use their gym membership.

Here's another fitness-related app we reported on that gives users entertainment while the run by making them think they're in a zombie chase.