IKEA billionaire offers US$15,000 for frugal game players

Ikea founder and Swedish's richest man Ingvar Kamprad is prone to preaching from the pulpit of frugality but his latest stunt goes above and beyond, offering a US$15,000 incentive to the winner of a Flappy Bird-esque computer game called Flappy Saver.

Players of the game were encouraged to avoid retail spending traps with the highest scorer receiving the monetary prize.

The winner of the competition, which ran from June 27 to July 18, received their prize in the form of deposits at the billionaire’s Ikano Bank in Luxembourg, Bloomberg reports.

"We want to get new customers to discover Ikano and do something for small savers, in whom most major banks aren't that interested," Emma Roslund Johansson, a sales manager at Ikano's Swedish operations, told Bloomberg in an interview.

Ikano was founded in 1943 by Kamprad as part of the popular discount furniture retailer IKEA, but was spun off in 1988 into the Ikano Group, which is still family owned.

The 88-year-old founder is notorious for his frugal lifestyle – flying economy class on budget airlines like EasyJet and living in an unassuming bungalow (filled with Ikea furniture, of course). He only recently parted ways with his Volvo 240 GL that he owned for more than two decades because it was deemed unsafe, reports The Telegraph newspaper.

But some, including Johan Stenebo, Kamprad’s former executive assistant and author of “The Truth About Ikea”, have questioned the entrepreneur’s “budget billionaire” reputation. It's reported Kamprad owns a large country estate in Sweden and a vineyard in Provence, France. He also drove a Porche in the 1960s and was known for his bespoke suits.