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.
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
“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.”
What do you remember about MWC 2014? Take our quiz!
To keep up-to-date with all the latest mobile news, sign up for our free mobile tech newsletter!
Want even more insight and analysis of mobile technology news? Check out our special Mobility Focus section!
Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector
Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…
Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…
Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…
Explore the future of work with the Silicon In Focus Podcast. Discover how AI is…
Executive hits out at the DoJ's “staggering proposal” to force Google to sell off its…