Samsung discontinuing rewards program for Bixby virtual assistant

Devout Samsung smartphone users may be disappointed to hear that the company is discontinuing its incentives program that it had provided to encourage use of Bixby, its competitor to smart assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google Assistant.

As reported by The Verge and XDA Developers, the My Bixby Level reward program will officially shut down on August 10th. The program rewarded users with exclusive background colors for the assistant's user interface, as well as Samsung Pay reward points that could be exchanged for discounts, gift cards, and other prizes of that ilk.

As of the time of publishing this story, Samsung has not given any reason for the decision to terminate the rewards program.