Samsung Pays New Samsung Pay Shoppers

Samsung has found a new way to incentivize people to sign up and use Samsung Pay.

It’s latest holiday promotion offers consumers $100 off any Samsung.com purchase after Samsung Pay is activated with an eligible card. That offer will be valid between Dec. 15 and Dec. 31.

What’s most interesting is this comes after a busy week for Samsung Pay.

A more recent ploy by the company involves Best Buy gift cards. Owners of select smartphones who register new accounts with both Samsung Pay and Samsung’s full website will automatically be rewarded with a $50 Best Buy gift card. Users only need to add a single credit card to their profiles to qualify, but they only have until Dec. 31 to do so.

The move indicates that Samsung is throwing a great deal of its industry weight behind the U.S. launch of its mobile payments platform. Mobile World Live reported in September that the carrier had already processed $30 million in transactions since launching in South Korea in August. Add on top of these figures the fact that 10 percent of Samsung Pay users use the platform for purchases every day; suddenly, a U.S. launch backed by a generous gift card rewards program could serve Samsung very well.

“Although the details on Samsung Pay usage are constantly being updated, the response we’ve received so far has been beyond our expectations,” Injong Rhee, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics and head of Samsung Pay, said in September. “We knew Samsung Pay would be a gamechanger in the mobile payments industry, and now with the user data, we are seeing the greater impact it is having on consumer behavior and on the lifestyle of our customers.”

And just this week the mobile payments service said eight more credit and debit card issuers will join the Samsung Pay platform, with Chase as the marquee addition.

“With expanded support from eight additional issuers, including Chase and SunTrust, we look forward to building even more momentum around Samsung Pay,” Rhee said. “Through our ever-expanding ecosystem of financial partners, Samsung Pay users will be able to take advantage of the most widely accepted mobile payment solution.”