How to use SamChar
Everything you need, in the order you need it. Start with the section for who you are.
01 For citizens
Answering surveys is free, and you keep everything you earn.
Create your account
Choose "Citizen" when you register. You need your name, email, district and date of birth. Registration is free and takes about a minute.
Find a survey
Open Surveys. Each card shows the organization, how many questions there are, roughly how long it takes and the reward. Surveys matching your field are shown first.
Answer honestly and completely
Every question must be answered before you can submit. A progress bar shows how far you are. Your answers are checked for quality, so rushing costs you more than it saves.
Collect your points
Points are added as soon as your response passes the quality check. If it is held for review, the organization decides and the points arrive on approval.
Spend them on a voucher
Open Rewards. Every card shows what it costs in points and what it is worth in Ngultrum, and the catalogue can be filtered to show only what your balance already covers. Data and airtime work on either network anywhere in Bhutan.
Use your code
Claim a voucher and it appears under My redemptions. As soon as we issue the code it shows up there with instructions, and we email it to you as well.
Getting the most out of it
- Fill in your district and field on your Account page — matching surveys are shown to you first.
- Answer in your own words on open questions. Repeated or copy-pasted text is flagged for review.
- Answering week after week builds a participation streak and raises your civic level.
- Your trust score rises with quality responses. A higher score means fewer of your answers are held for review.
02 Points and rewards
Points are what SamChar pays you with, and the rewards catalogue is the only place they are spent. SamChar does not pay cash to citizens.
Every survey states its reward before you open it. A verified response pays that reward into your balance immediately; a response held for review pays on approval. Points never expire and nothing on SamChar ever costs a citizen money.
Open Rewards. Each card gives the cost in points first, then what the voucher is worth in Ngultrum, so you can judge it before you commit. Filter to Only what I can afford to see what your balance already covers.
Claim a voucher and it appears under My redemptions straight away. We issue the code there and email it to you. Most codes are the standard Bhutanese recharge kind you enter on your own handset; the rest are shown at a counter.
What is in the catalogue now
Live figures from the catalogue, not a sales list.
Mobile data and airtime work on either network anywhere in Bhutan. Cafe, restaurant and bookshop vouchers are Thimphu only for now, and each card says so.
03 For organizations
You set your own price. SamChar does not publish a rate card and does not resell your responses.
Register as an organization
Choose "Organization" when you register and give your real organization name and type. A SamChar administrator reviews the account before it can publish anything.
Add funds to your wallet
Open Wallet → Add funds, request a payment reference, pay by bank QR, then submit the bank journal number. SamChar verifies it against the bank statement and credits your wallet.
Build your survey
Create survey lets you add up to 30 questions across ten question types, plus optional attention checks and opposite pairs that catch careless answers.
Set your own price
You choose the reward per response and the target number of responses. The builder shows the exact launch cost live: the reward budget plus the platform fee.
Activate it
Activating takes the full reward budget and the platform fee from your wallet at once. From then on, respondents can only ever be paid from money already on the table.
Review and analyse
Responses arrive with a quality score. Approve or reject the ones held for review, read the per-question charts under Analysis, and export everything as CSV.
Close and get your change
Closing the survey returns any unspent reward budget to your wallet, minus anything still reserved for responses awaiting your review. The platform fee is not refunded.
04 Money and fees
Three numbers govern everything. All three are shown to you before you commit to anything.
The reward you choose, multiplied by your target number of responses. Held against the survey from the moment you activate it, so a respondent can never be promised money that is not there. Whatever is not paid out comes back to your wallet.
Currently 10% of the reward budget, with a minimum of Nu. 50 per survey. Charged once, at activation, from the same wallet. It covers verification, the integrity checks and payouts, and it is not refunded when a survey closes.
1 point = Nu. 1. This is the rate the launch quote uses to turn your chosen reward into Ngultrum, and the same rate the rewards catalogue is priced at. What you fund and what a respondent can claim are the same money. Citizens are never paid in cash.
A worked example
You want 200 responses and decide a response is worth 25 points to you.
If only 140 people respond before you close it, the 60 unspent rewards return to your wallet. The fee does not.
The data marketplace
If you opted a survey into the marketplace when you created it, you can list its anonymous aggregate results for other organizations to buy. SamChar takes 10% of each sale; the rest goes to your wallet. Only consented, verified, adult responses are ever included, and groups smaller than five people are hidden.
05 Trust and privacy
What SamChar checks
- Every organization is reviewed by a person before it can publish.
- One account per national ID, enforced at the database level.
- Response time is measured on the server, so it cannot be faked by the browser.
- Attention checks, opposite pairs, straight-lining and duplicate text all raise flags.
- Flagged responses are held for a human decision — never auto-rejected.
- Every privileged action is written to an immutable audit log.
What SamChar will not do
- Sell or share your individual answers. Ever.
- Include your data in a shared dataset without your separate, explicit consent.
- Include anyone under 18 in a shared dataset, consent or not.
- Publish a breakdown resting on fewer than five people.
- Use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking.
Full detail: Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions
06 Questions
What is SamChar?
SamChar is a citizen-engagement and survey platform for Bhutan. Verified government bodies, schools, NGOs and businesses publish surveys, citizens answer them and earn points, and organizations can analyze results or trade anonymized aggregate data with each other.
Is SamChar only for feedback surveys?
No. SamChar supports ten question types, including file uploads, scales, and multiple choice, across up to 30 questions per survey. It runs everything from a one-minute feedback form to a full research questionnaire.
Is SamChar free for citizens?
Yes. Creating an account and answering surveys is free. Citizens are the ones being paid, never the ones paying.
How do citizens get paid?
Each survey shows its reward before you start. When a response is verified, points are added to your balance. You spend those points in the rewards catalogue on mobile data, airtime top-ups, grocery, fuel, coffee and bookshop vouchers. SamChar does not pay cash to citizens, so points are only ever spent on SamChar.
What can I actually get for my points?
Mobile data packs and airtime top-ups on either Bhutanese network, which work anywhere in the country, plus grocery, fuel, bus travel, streaming, bookshop and stationery vouchers. Cafe and restaurant vouchers are currently limited to Thimphu, and every reward says so on its own card. Vouchers arrive as a code you can see in My redemptions and use straight away.
How much does SamChar cost an organization?
The organization sets its own price: it chooses the reward a respondent receives and how many responses it wants. That whole reward budget is taken from its SamChar wallet when the survey is activated, plus a platform fee charged as a percentage of the budget. Any budget not spent is returned when the survey closes.
Who can publish a survey on SamChar?
Only organizations a SamChar administrator has reviewed and approved. Nothing an unverified organization creates is visible to citizens.
What stops people from submitting junk answers for the points?
Every response is scored automatically for response speed, straight-lining, contradictory answer pairs, and attention checks. Flagged responses are held for the organization to review before any points are paid — nothing is rejected automatically. A person decides.
What is the SamChar data marketplace?
Organizations that close a survey and opted it into the marketplace can list its anonymized aggregate results for other organizations to buy. Individual answers are never included. Any breakdown smaller than five people is hidden, and responses from anyone under 18 are never included, regardless of consent.
Can organizations analyze their own results without exporting?
Yes. Every survey has a built-in analysis page with charts per question, plus a one-click CSV export for anything you want to work with elsewhere.
What is a point worth?
Points are not currency and have no cash value outside SamChar, and they cannot be exchanged for money. Every reward in the catalogue shows what it costs in points and what the voucher is worth in Ngultrum, so you can see the value before you spend anything.
Still stuck? Email samchar.bt@gmail.com.