For the past couple of weeks, Google Pay has hosted its Spring Challenge, inviting users to complete tasks, earn stamps, and hopefully even score $30 cashback. Originally, this promotion was set to run from April 12th through April 22 (Earth Day) — however, at nearly the last minute, the Spring Challenge was extended. Now, Google Pay users will have until May 3rd to complete their collection and get that free money!
In order to meet the Spring Challenge, you’ll need to earn five different stamps, each representing a different animal: Robin, Elk, Grizzly, Alligator, and Fox. There are also different methods you can use in order to receive these respective stamps. For example, if you answer the daily quiz question correctly, you’ll receive a random stamp. Meanwhile, paying a friend on Google Pay that you haven’t paid before will also yield you a random stamp. But, if you want to be a bit more strategic about it, you can look for “guaranteed stamp” opportunities that tell you exactly which animal you’ll get for completing it. So, if you redeem a cashback offer from a participating merchant or refer a friend that makes their first payment, you’ll score a Fox stamp whereas, if you pay three friends you haven’t paid before, you’ll get an alligator stamp, etc.
What’s also kind of cool is that you can gift stamps to friends or request stamps from them. This means that, if you end up with multiples of a certain animal (which can happen since some challenges result in a random stamp), you can simply send it to someone else and help them complete their collection. By the way, you can also recall any stamps that go unclaimed if needed.
Personally, I breathed quite a sigh of relief upon seeing that the offer had been extended. That’s because, in order to earn my last stamp, I needed my referral to go through. Unfortunately, since the qualifying payment the person I referred had sent wasn’t set to clear until the 24th, I worried that I’d just miss the cutoff. Luckily, the payment actually ended up working today, allowing me to finish my board.
When I first completed the challenge and tapped the “claim reward” button, I was a bit concerned because I didn’t see the $30 pop up in my “Total Rewards” section. In fact, I worried that perhaps Google had reached the 200,000 total prize limit they stated in their terms. Yet, it turns out that the funds had been deposited into my Google Pay balance instead — along with my $5 referral fee. From there, I was also able to transfer the combined $35 to my bank account.
Ultimately, this Spring Challenge is a pretty fun promotion — and happens to be one that you can complete without spending any money. Plus, it has the benefit of bringing more people to Google Pay, which happens to have some pretty useful card-linked cashback offers worth taking a look at (especially since some may result in double dipping). Therefore, if you’re an Android or iOS user who hasn’t already checked out the Google Pay platform, this Spring Challenge may be the perfect excuse to get started and earn an extra $30 in the process.