Samsung has been experimenting with incentives to lure people to some of its apps and services like Samsung Pay and Bixby. The approach is predominantly apparent in Samsung Pay where the company rewards users with points for every transaction through its service. Users can accumulate and redeem these points for gift vouchers, Samsung products, etc. The company used to run a similar rewards program for using Bixby as well but has ended it in August this year.
It appears Samsung has now launched a rewards program for the Galaxy Apps store users in South Korea from October 1. The news comes from an announcement post in the Galaxy Apps store after the recent update. By the looks of it, it seems Samsung has mistakenly made the announcement visible to users even outside of Korea.
The post is in Korean, and the translated version is of not much help to understand the finer details of the program, but the broad concept seems to be that Samsung users in Korea will be able to earn and use rewards points on app downloads from the Galaxy Apps store. Essentially, it’s a rewards program to incentivize Samsung users to buy apps from the Galaxy Apps store over Google Play.
An incentive to use Galaxy Apps store
Users can earn rewards points only on paid apps, and the ratio of earnings will apparently depend on the mode of payment. Paying through Samsung Pay will fetch users 1% of the purchase price as rewards points, while direct credit card payments brings the benefit down to 0.5%. App purchases can be made partly through points, but in such transactions, the rewards points will be earned only on the cash component.
The program requires registration, which can be done either by going to the More section under Samsung Rewards in the Samsung Pay app or by going to the Samsung Rewards menu under My Apps section of the Galaxy Apps store. The latest update of the Galaxy Apps store is also must for any of this to work. We currently don't know when and if Samsung is planning to launch this program in other markets.
