You May Have Google Play Points You Can Turn Into Gift Cards - Here's How to Check
Google Play Points can be turned into gift cards at major retailers like Amazon, Starbucks, and Walmart. Here's how to check your balance.
Every purchase through the Google Play Store, including paid apps, in-app purchases, digital books, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, and eligible subscriptions such as Google storage or third-party streaming services, earns rewards. Points can also be used for merchandise, Play Store credit, sweepstakes entries (current prizes include a VIP trip to New York Comic Con and a copy of "one of the single most important comic books in the entire history of the medium"), and gift cards.
Gift card options are limited but practical, with all cards priced at $5 for 750 points, $10 for 1,500 points, and $20 for 3,000 points. Unused points expire 12 months after the last point activity, but every time a point is earned or used, the 12-month clock resets for the entire balance.
To check a balance, open the Play Store app; the points tally appears at the top in an oval. Tapping it shows your status level and the "Earn" and "Use" tabs. The three-dot menu in the top right provides access to points history and level benefits. The Play Store also offers weekly giveaways for those who want to earn without spending, and the "Earn" tab may include additional point boosts or challenges. In the ZDNet report, the journalist saw offers for 3x and 8x point boosts, while a colleague had a challenge to use Google Pay to earn 200 more points.
The journalist said she had never paid attention to her points until a ZDNET colleague stumbled upon a cache in her own account enough for a Starbucks gift card. After checking, she found the 1,000-plus points she had been amassing since 2019, mostly from subscriptions earning 2 to 6 points at a time, amounted to only $10, yet it was a gift card hidden in plain sight.