A little over ten years ago I cofounded a startup in Boston that was attempting to do something along these lines. We couldn’t believe how much money people were spending on such a bad investment. We were going to sell our own scratch tickets that had a positive EV. You’d scratch a ticket and reveal a code which could be redeemed for a fractional share(s) of stock in one of a basket of companies. The hope is we’d come close to the entertainment value while at the same time helping people save and earn a massive jump in ROI over regular scratch tickets (which paid 50 to 85% or so). The numbers would work at scale if people liked it. We weren’t the right people to do it, but I hope other people someday will offer something similar. Stockcards is something a little close to it, which is cool to see.

Amazing! I had a similar idea, which was to simulate lottery tickets by selling shares of far-out-of-the-money options. They would rarely pay out, but when they do, it would be a lot.

So kind of like https://www.nsandi.com/premium-bonds ?

Those are government bonds, but it's not far off your idea.

Edit: for clarity, the effective rate paid does vary over time according to interest rates, which usually have some relation to how well the markets are doing.

> interest rates, which usually have some relation to how well the markets are doing.

Uh, maybe? There is a positive correlation of sorts, but it's nothing to write home about. It doesn't seem like this product was designed with any attention to the potential of better-than-fair payouts.

Its 1.4% at the moment - which is good for the UK

... or the operators could simply invest the float for their own benefit above baseline, which is no different from what the operators of a fixed rate savings account might do.