What exactly do the Gamerscore's bring to the XBox?

I had heard from several of my friends that you could do a lot with the gamerscore points on the XBox. Such as. Redeem a few points in your balance. But as I've already read through Google, etc. Is not something like that. Or am I wrong? The points are just purely there to see what successes you have and which not?

I just want to make sure. Or maybe someone knows whether there will soon be a function in the direction?

With the points you can't do anything…