Among the tough things about launching a new payments platform is convincing people they want to use it, particularly if there is nothing particularly wrong with the plastic card technology they are currently comfortable with.
Hence the difficulty of Samsung. It managed to skip the merchant acquisition part of the mobile payments math that has managed to bedevil so many others so far (looking at you, Apple) by building its tech to run on both NFC and any regular card-swiping location but is having some difficulty getting consumers to actually try it out.
So, it is paying them to. Sort of.
Users who have downloaded — but not used — Samsung Pay will be able to earn an incentive for using it: a $30 gift card. The offer is only for those who got halfway there on usage. Those who already use Samsung Pay get nothing, and there are no points offered for downloading it then using it at this point.
Using it, in this case, is not a one-shot deal. The technical requirements of the offer are such that customers must use Samsung Pay three times between April 15 and May 10.
Once those purchases are made, Samsung will send a digital $30 gift card to the establishment of a user’s choice: Best Buy, eBay, GameStop or Regal Entertainment.
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