MWC 2015 – Samsung Takes Mobile Payments To The Masses With Samsung Pay

Samsung has blown the mobile payments industry wide open with the launch of its own brand service, Samsung Pay.

The South Korean manufacturer has signalled it is ready for a showdown with Apple Pay by launching a system that it says will benefit more retailers and consumers than Apple’s service.

Set to launch in the summer, Samsung Pay uses the new and powerful technology inside the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge to provide consumers with greater flexibility to pay than ever before.

Gap in the market?

Samsung estimates that Apple Pay reaches only 10 percent of merchants in the US alone, meaning there is a huge opportunity for it to capitalise on.

And the company has stolen a major march over its rival by opening up its payment technology to any retailer than accepts credit or debit cards, as well as those equipped with NFC technology. This is thanks to a new proprietary technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), which lets Samsung Pay mimic payments made by traditional magnetic strip cards, with the user simply holding the device up to a point of sale terminal to complete their purchase

Easy money

Samsung has partnered with major payment networks such as MasterCard and Visa to integrate their technology into Samsung Pay, and also announced a wide range of global financial partners including American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank.

“Samsung Pay will reinvent how people pay for goods and services and transform how they use their smartphones,” said JK Shin, CEO and head of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung Electronics. “The secure and simple payment process, coupled with our robust partner network, makes Samsung Pay a truly game-changing service that will bring value to consumers and our partners in the ecosystem.”

Any transactions made by Samsung Pay will be kept safe by the company’s own mobile security platform, Samsung KNOX. This service does not keep any personal account numbers on a consumer’s device, which, when combined with tokenisation – replacing sensitive card data with a unique, secure token to prevent fraud – helps ensure secure mobile payments worldwide.

Moreover, in the case of a lost phone, Samsung’s Find My Mobile feature enables users to locate, lock and even wipe their devices remotely; ensuring Samsung Pay data is hardly compromised.

“Mobile commerce just got a lot more interesting,” said Jim McCarthy, executive vice president, Visa Inc. “Combining Visa’s expertise in payment technology with Samsung’s leadership in creating innovative mobile experiences, gives more choice to financial institutions who want to enable their customers to pay by phone.”

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