A new change to the Play Store's Play Points rewards program has been spotted in the wild. It isn't live on any of my devices yet and could either be in the process of rolling out or part of a smaller test, but Google is allowing some customers to redeem Play Points for actual hardware on the Google Store, including Pixel phones and Nest devices.

If you aren't familiar with Play Points, it's a rewards system that's been built into the Play Store since 2019 in certain markets. As you spend money on apps or other media, you earn points that can be used on things like credit for in-app purchases in games or even Play Store credit for more purchases. The rate that you earn these points depends on your current "level," itself based on how much you spend. Google recently made it even easier to redeem points for in-app purchases.

The change was spotted by 9to5Google and actually offers a pretty great redemption rate compared to some other methods, offering double the return compared to Play Store credit at 50 points to the dollar rather than 100 points to the dollar — though that might vary based on other details like your current status level. But there are a few limits.

Offers don't stack, so if you redeem a $20-off coupon and a $10-off coupon, you can't use them both on the same purchase. Redemptions also expire after 30 days, so you can't sit on a pile of them like some kind of coupon dragon, cool as that sounds. The maximum redemption shown is for $200 points, so you probably can't finagle an entirely free Pixel 6, either, but many accessories, speakers, and displays could be fully discounted.

Redeemed credits/coupons apply automatically at the time of checkout (presumably they're tied to your account), so you don't have to do anything dumb like copy and paste a code. But that also might mean you can't redeem it for someone else to use. According to the current terms, the Google Store redemption offers will only be around until November 30th.

So far, the new redemption method doesn't seem to have rolled out universally. It's not clear if this is part of a limited test, a gradual release, or if there are other unknown requirements that accounts need to meet for these offers to be visible. Support documents for the Play Store don't yet mention this redemption method, though all the other methods are included. We've reached out to Google for more information, and we'll let you know if the company has anything to provide regarding these new redemption offers.