Designed by a couple recent Harvard grads, GymPact is a service that encourages people to make it into the gym by linking performance to money according to ABC News. Currently limited to iPhone owners, users sign up for the service through the GymPact application and decide how many days per week that they would like to exercise. The app allows the user to “check-in” to the gym similar to Foursquare and the minimum amount of time that qualifies for a check-in at the gym is 30 minutes. GymPact currently has about 40,000 gyms in the database, but a user can add a new gym by “checking in” during a 30 minute workout.
The user then assigns a dollar value between $5 to $100 in five dollar increments that will be charged to a credit card that’s linked to the account every time that a user misses a workout. People that routinely find reasons to skip the gym will be faced with a financial penalty if they do not consistently exercise. However, users that do manage to hit their exercise goals every week will be the recipients of cash prizes. Each week, GymPact pools up the money that was collected from the people that didn’t exercise and splits it up among the people that got into the gym.
In addition, the amount of exercise dictates how much a user gets paid. Once a user reaches $10 in earnings, they can withdraw that money and deposit it into their Paypal account. Users can opt out of the program for the following week at any time, but cannot leave during the current week-long pact. However, users that get injured during the week can provide a medical exemption note from a doctor or employer to opt out of the current pact.
According to company representatives, payout rates have been hovering between 50 cents to $1 per workout. A user that works out four times a week stands to make between $100 to $200 a year for sticking to exercise goals. GymPact also plans to make the application available to Android owners very soon as well as anyone on a mobile device with a HTML5-compatible browser.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
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