💸 Kids find money apps fun when earning is real, immediate, and tied to actions they control.
🔁 Engagement comes from loops, challenges, rewards, and daily habits that keep them coming back.
🔓 The real driver isn’t features, it’s independence, having their own money and making decisions.
The quotes below come directly from kids and teens who responded to the 'What Makes Modak Fun' challenge inside the Modak app. Grammar has been lightly corrected for readability. No answers were fabricated or altered in meaning.
Most apps try to be useful. Fewer manage to be something a kid actually looks forward to opening.
Inside the Modak app, we asked 721 kids and teens one simple question: "What makes Modak fun for you?"
No options. No categories. Just whatever came to mind first.
The answers ranged from earning MBX2 to waking up and scratching a card5 before breakfast. Here is what they told us.
The most common answer across the dataset was simple: you can earn real money here.
Not points that stay in an app. Not badges. Money they can actually use.
"Earning money is my favorite, it makes Modak sooooo fun!!!"
"Getting free money with MBX is fun."
"I can earn points to earn money."
"What makes Modak fun is that I can earn my own money for chores."
"Earning MBX which can be transferred to money."
"I love how fun it is to make money easily."
What stands out is how kids describe the process as fun, not just the result. Challenges, walking, scratch-offs, earning itself becomes the activity.
If there is one word that shows up everywhere, it is: challenges.
They are not background features, they are the reason many kids open the app.
"The challenges make it fun."
"What makes Modak fun is all of the challenges."
"THE CHALLENGES."
"The challenges make Modak fun because it's literally free money."
"What makes Modak fun for me is the challenges. They get me to reflect and think about things, while earning points!"
"I love it when these challenges have to do with finance because it's like I look at my balance and then come here to learn about the best way to use it."
That last response matters. A kid connects a challenge to their own money and adjusts behavior.
That is learning, without it feeling like a lesson.
The daily scratch-off5 came up again and again, not because of how much it gives, but because of the habit it creates.
"Waking up to a new scratcher."
"Logging in every day to scratch my tickets."
"I love the cards that you scratch every day."
"I like doing the MBX scratch offs."
"Getting a scratch off ticket to win tokens every day and scratching them off."
"Watching my money grow almost daily makes me excited to be able to buy something nice once I have enough after saving."
The scratch-off is not just a feature5. It is the entry point.
Under a lot of responses, there is a deeper theme: independence.
Not the feature, the feeling.
"I don't have to ask mom for cash anymore and wait for her to go to the bank."
"It makes buying things easy so I don't gotta beg my mom."
"I can buy the stuff I want without having to ask."
"Using my own money."
"Being in charge."
"It's fun to have my own independence with money."
That shift, from asking to deciding, is what changes everything.
For a lot of kids, that is the real reason it feels fun.
🎯 Modak turns earning into an activity through challenges, walking rewards, and daily interactions.
📈 The app creates a feedback loop where effort leads to visible progress and motivation.
💳 By giving kids their own debit card, Modak makes financial independence feel real and exciting.
The walking feature4 showed up consistently and often in a very specific way: kids noticed it changed their behavior.
"That I can walk and earn MBX."
"The walking goal keeps me moving."
"I really really love the walking and earning 10 MBX, it makes me wanna earn the 10."
"Modak is fun because I can track my steps and earn MBX.
"It makes me want to walk more and do challenges that I would usually hate doing."
"The walking and the everyday coins is very fun to me."
A reward turned something they did not want to do into something they look for.
That is rare and it showed up clearly in the responses.
This was less frequent, but important.
Some kids explicitly described learning as part of the experience.
"What makes Modak fun is that I can learn about finances and get SMARTER."
"Modak is fun because I learn new things."
"Learning! I can learn so much about money."
"Completing the challenges and learning how to save money."
"It teaches me how to save money well. I've been doing better thanks to Modak."
"I have become more responsible with my chores."
“I’ve been doing better” is doing a lot of work there.
That is not engagement. That is behavior change.
A quieter theme, but a real one, was about the card itself.
Not just using it, but having it.
"Having my own card and it's fun to be responsible."
"That I get my own debit card and get to spend my own money!"
"I got to be an adult and earn money."
"The card design."
"I got my card in the mail with football on it and I really like it!"
"A creative way for kids to start banking."
For kids, the card is not just functional. It is symbolic, something that is theirs.
Not every answer was polished. Some were just… direct.
"It's so fun when I complete a challenge correctly and Modak refuses to give my points. I left a bad review because of that."
"Money."
"I'm going to be honest. The money."
"The money. And the challenges I love them."
"Everything."
"I love money."
That first one matters the most.
A kid expected the system to work, and was frustrated when it didn’t.
That only happens when they care.
When you look at all of these responses together, something becomes clear:
Kids do not separate fun from function.
What they are describing is a loop:
Do something → get rewarded → feel good → come back
And underneath all of it, one idea keeps showing up:
It’s mine. I did it. I earned it. That is what makes it stick.
Challenges, scratch-offs, walking rewards, chore earnings, and a real debit card, built for kids who are ready to be in charge of their own money. Get started at Modak now!
These responses were collected through the 'What Makes Modak Fun' challenge inside the Modak app, where kids and teens earn MBX rewards for engaging with financial and personal growth prompts. Modak is a kids debit card and financial learning platform for children up to 17 years old.
All quotes in this article were submitted by real kids and teens through the Modak in-app challenge 'What Makes Modak Fun.' 721 responses were collected in total. Grammar and spelling were lightly corrected for readability. No responses were fabricated or altered in meaning. The themes and sections reflect the most common topics that emerged organically across the full dataset. One critical response (about a challenge not awarding MBX points) was included as submitted, authentic UGC includes honest feedback.
