It's a lottery where you can't lose, but is it legal? A growing promotional trend being utilized by credit unions is the offering of prize-linked savings (PLS) products, which provide consumers with the chance to win prizes in exchange for the consumer making one or more deposits into a savings account. For example, Save to Win, the largest PLS program, which currently operates in four states, gives each depositor an entry into a cash prize raffle for each $25 deposit into a savings account, up to ten entries per month. While financial institutions have historically been prohibited from running raffle- or lottery-type promotions under state lottery laws and federal banking regulations, Congress and a number of states have recently amended previously prohibitive laws to legalize such promotions in the limited context of PLS accounts, in order to incentivize people to save more.
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