Coins & Rewards

Overview

Coins are how KidMoat pays a child back for staying within the screen time limit their parent set. There is one earning rule and one way to spend: real-world rewards a parent has switched on. Nothing else moves the wallet.

Earning Coins

Your child earns a flat 5 coins for any day they stay within their daily screen time limit. Using the entire allowance still counts — the rule is "at or under," not "strictly under."

Go over the limit and that day earns nothing.

If no daily screen time limit is set, there is nothing to stay within, so the day earns 0 coins — always. Set a daily limit before expecting your child to earn.

Nothing else adds to the total. There is no bonus for using educational apps, no penalty removed for a good bedtime, no extra coins for any other behavior. Five a day, or zero, is the whole rule.

When Coins Arrive

A day is scored once, overnight, after it ends — for the child's own local yesterday. A day that is still running is never scored, so the child's card deliberately shows no coin figure for today; yesterday's coins are waiting the next morning.

A day with no usage data at all (the device was off, or a sync failed) is not scored either way — it neither earns coins nor gets marked as a miss.

Two Numbers

Your child's app shows two coin figures:

  • Total coins — every coin ever earned. It only goes up and it sets their level.
  • Coins to spend — what is left after redeeming rewards. Redeeming lowers this number, never the total.

Spending Coins: Rewards

Coins exist to be spent on a fixed catalogue of ten real-world rewards:

  • Ice cream, any flavour
  • A favourite chocolate or snack
  • A trip to the park or playground
  • A film at the cinema, child's choice
  • An hour of cricket or football with a parent
  • A cycle ride together
  • A sleepover at a friend's or cousin's
  • Choosing the weekend plan
  • Pocket money
  • A book to keep

KidMoat never rewards a child with more screen time, a later bedtime, or an unlocked app. Rewards are always something a parent hands over in the real world.

How Pricing Works

Parents choose which of the ten rewards their family offers — nothing can be added beyond this list. By default the shop is empty until a parent switches something on.

Each reward defaults to 35 coins, which is one week of earning at 5 a day. A parent can set a different coin price for any reward they've activated.

A reward can instead be priced in streak days — 7, 14, or 30 days, never both currencies at once. See Streaks for how that works.

Redeeming

A child can redeem one reward per day. Trying for a second the same day is refused, and they can try again once a new day starts.

The moment a child redeems, their coins come off immediately and their parent gets a notification with a "Mark as given" button. If 72 hours pass without it being marked given, the parent is nudged again.

Setup

Two things need to be in place before coins mean anything to a child:

  1. A daily screen time limit — with none, no day can ever earn.
  2. At least one reward switched on — with none, there is nothing to spend on.