MasterCard Is Bringing Samsung Pay To Europe

Samsung has announced another major partner for its mobile payments offering, teaming up with MasterCard.

The payments provider will help launch Samsung Pay in Europe later this year as the South Korean manufacturer looks to take on the might of Apple Pay with its own offering for Samsung devices.

Currently trialling in South Korea, Samsung Pay is set to launch both in the company’s homeland and in the US later this summer.

Secure

The new partnership means that MasterCard users will be able to quickly and easily activate their credit, debit, reloadable prepaid and small business cards for use with Samsung Pay thanks to the company’s MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES).

This allows card issuers to connect to and enable Samsung Pay for their customers, and also ensuring they remain secure against any potential criminal activity.

“With the continued global growth and reliance on connected mobile devices, we are delighted to expand our relationship with Samsung by extending the reach of Samsung Pay and MDES to cardholders in Europe, said Javier Perez, president of MasterCard Europe.

“Europeans have been leading the way in the adoption of new ways to shop, buy and make a payment. Through our strong partnership with Samsung we look forward to continuing to drive innovation in mobile commerce by creating simple and secure digital payment experiences for consumers.”

The two companies have already announced they would be teaming up to make sure Samsung Pay remains a secure proposition for customers thanks to the use of MasterCard’s tokenisation technology.

This means that Samsung Pay users should never have their personal data put at risk when making a transaction, as a digital ‘token’ is created for each unique process to help complete the payment.

“Samsung Pay is pleased to join forces with MasterCard to offer a simple and safe mobile payment experience enabled for wider merchant acceptance to MasterCard cardholders and issuers in Europe,” said Injong Rhee, global head of Samsung Pay. “Both organisations are committed to ground breaking fintech innovations that will deliver on the promise of a true mobile wallet.”

Revealed at Mobile World Congress back in March, Samsung Pay marks the company’s first full entry into the mobile payments market

Rather than just using just Near Field Communication (NFC), as seen in systems such as Apple Pay, Samsung’s system also packs in magnetic secure transmission, which mimics magnetic-strip payment systems, meaning any retailer that currently accepts credit, debit or NFC payments can adopt the technology

Samsung estimates that Apple Pay reaches only ten percent of merchants in the US alone and believes there is a huge opportunity to be taken advantage of.

All clued up on mobile payments? Try our quiz!