Stored-Value Hedging

Profitability · gas price-lock economics

Does hedging pay?

A customizable P&L for a gas price-lock business like paylo.shop. Edit every pricing variable and cost margin below; the model prices the hedge from the paper's optimizer and shows the bottom line with and without it.

Downside protected

$132.50/acct

h*

0.95

Scenario

Net margin / account / yr · hedge = insurance

Expected

hedged
−$5.17
unhedged
$14.64

Worst 5% (CVaR)

hedged
−$74.99
unhedged
−$207.49

At σ = 25%, hedging to h* = 0.95 gives up $19.81 of expected margin to protect $132.50 in the worst 5% — a 6.7× protection ratio. Raise volatility and the trade gets more favorable.

Revenue / acct

Float income (T-bills)$7.61
Annual fee$2.70
Interchange$14.88
Hedge spread$24.80
Total$49.99

Cost / acct

Interest to user$7.92
Processing$5.72
Partner commission$1.80
Opex + card program$7.00
Acquisition (amortized)$6.00
Hedge cost (expected)$26.73
Total$55.17

net margin

−0.4%

hedged / throughput

hedge premium

$19.81

expected cost to hedge

downside protected

$132.50

worst-5% saved

protection ratio

6.7×

protected / premium

return on float

−0.2%

T-bill − user APY

LTV : CAC

-0.9×

LTV −$15.51

Portfolio roll-up

× 2,500 customers

expected net (hedged)

−$12.9k

tail risk removed

$331.3k

cost to hedge

$49.5k

Scenarios persist to a Supabase Postgres database (hedging_profitability_scenarios). Presets are read-only; saved scenarios can be updated or deleted. Hedge costs come from the optimizer: the expected case uses mean cost E[N], the worst case uses CVaR95, at h* (hedged) vs h=0 (unhedged), scaled by annual throughput. Hedging trades a little expected margin for large tail protection. Illustrative — calibrated to the paylo.shop model, not audited figures.