Polina is an undergraduate student at Belarusian State Economic University (BSEU) where she is studying at the faculty of International Business Communication for a degree specializing in Intercultural Communication. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, music and travelling.
Microsoft’s Bing has partnered with Seattle-based digital rewards service provider Tango Card to allow users of the web search engine to earn $500 in digital currency through its rewards program.
Bing Rewards was launched in 2010 in an attempt to increase the number of search engine users. The program enables users to get credits by searching the web, discovering new features and trying other Microsoft services.
Earned credits then can be redeemed for gift cards and products, as well as for different contests. The latest sweepstake was conducted together with Tango Card, which entered into a partnership with California-based bitcoin processor SnapCard a few weeks ago. “We’ve been extremely fortunate to work with Tango Card and Bing Rewards to find new ways to onboard users to the bitcoin community,” Snapcard wrote in its blog post.
Together with Tango Card, Snapcard launched MassPay, a cross-border payments API that allows sending instantaneous mass payments to a phone number, e-mail address or bitcoin wallet. The integration enabled Tango Card to give digital currency as a reward to its partners.
Using Snapcard system, companies are able to transfer funds all around the world instantly and withdraw money in local currency for less than 0.25%.
Bing Rewards became the first company that used bitcoin as a reward through the partnership with Tango Card.
The contest starts on July 31 and finishes on August 31 at 9:00 AM ET. The winners will be announced on about September 9 on Bing’s website.
Microsoft is showing the growing interest in the virtual currency. Last year, the company started accepting bitcoin payments for Xbox games and mobile content. The service allowed U.S.-based users to add money to their account with cryptocurrency. The payment option is now available for Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox Games, Xbox Music, and Xbox Video stores.
Last month, Microsoft revealed its plans and strategies for Internet of Things. The company is going to connect all desktop and mobile device apps through the new Universal Windows Platform (UWP).
UWP intends to pull together all Microsoft compute platforms to allow developers create a program that will run on all flavors of the Microsoft Windows OS.
Founded in 2013, Snapcard is aimed at increasing the number of bitcoin users all over the world. The company intends to simplify the use of cryptocurrency and increase people awareness.
Tango Card’s users include about 1000 companies, such as Amazon, Fandango, Applebee’s, Best Buy, Fandango and Foot Locker.