This is a dark pattern that's widely known in mobile gaming design. Similar to loot crates that sometimes contain gold and sometimes have nothing. The idea is that if you give the user something as a result of an action, without a game of chance, the user has more control over it and can choose when to do the action and when not to. When you make it into a game of chance, the user keeps doing the action in the hope that "next time" they will get the reward. It creates more engagement. It's based on the work of B.F. Skinner and called "variable rate reinforcement" and works especially well on people who are susceptible to gambling addictions. Google it.
If bunq really wanted to randomly give a prize, they could have simply "automatically" turn a "wheel" behind the scenes, and then just notify you if you've won when you've won. Or not do random "prizes" at all and tie the reward to some kind of KPI. They chose to use the random pattern, wheel and all, consciously to get people to engage more.
To be honest I don't see why a banking app needs to drum up engagement like that. It's a banking app. It's used for banking. When I need to do something with money, that's when I engage with it. And I like bunq for what it is. The "spin the wheel" functionality makes it look scummy in my eyes.
I'm not going to stop using bunq because of it, but it definitely indicates a direction that I am worried about, because I don't want to see the bank I use for all my banking now, thanks to the great features, being turned into a dopamine - fueled attention sink.
