Watch the full Alpha Bank walkthrough video here: Alpha Bank Introduction Video
1. How Students Earn Alphas
Students earn Alphas by completing academic work in their apps: mastering skills, being consistent, and achieving strong growth and mastery results on tests. Each week, students receive a paycheck email showing how much they earned the previous week.
2. Allocating Your Deposits
When Alphas come in, they appear as pending deposits on the Alpha Bank main screen. Students must decide where to put them before they become available.
Three options for each deposit:
Put it all in Checking
Put it all in Savings
Split between the two (choose any amount for each)
Once allocated, the balances update immediately. Students can access Alpha Bank through StudyReel or Timeback using their existing login.
3. Checking vs. Savings
Students have two accounts in Alpha Bank:
Checking Account - This is the spending account. The balance shown in the top right of the screen is how many Alphas are available to spend right now.
Savings Account - This is where Alphas earn interest, just like a real bank. Savings has a lockdown period: once Alphas are deposited into savings, they must stay there for 14 days before they can be moved. During lockdown, students can see a countdown timer and how much interest they are earning.
Interest compounds weekly, which is actually faster than most real-world savings accounts. The longer students keep Alphas in savings, the more they earn.
4. Transferring Between Accounts
Students can move Alphas between checking and savings at any time, as long as savings funds are not in lockdown. Before confirming a transfer, the system shows how the move will affect interest earnings.
5. Spending Alphas in the Shop
Students can use their checking balance to buy gift cards in the Alpha Bank Shop.
How to redeem:
Open the Shop from the Alpha Bank screen
Browse available gift cards (items that require more Alphas than you have will be grayed out)
Select the gift card you want and confirm the purchase
The order appears in your transaction history with its status
If you do not see the email in your inbox, check your spam or trash folders.
Gift cards are virtual and delivered electronically.
6. Gift Card Delivery
Gift cards are processed Monday through Friday and delivered within 1–2 business days. Students usually receive their rewards before the weekend.
We partner with a rewards platform called Tremendous for gift card fulfillment. The reward is delivered to the parent's email address on file. Please save [email protected] as a trusted sender so it doesn't land in junk or promotions. The gift card is sent to both the student's email address and the parent's email address associated with the account.
7. Quick Tips
Allocate pending deposits as soon as they arrive
Use the Savings Account to earn interest while saving for bigger rewards
Check your paycheck email each week to track what you earned
Parents: explore bonuses and fines to reinforce household expectations