Samsung Pay Will Arrive In Europe Next Week

The European mobile payments market is set to get another big-name competitor next week as Samsung prepares to launch its service on the continent.

Samsung Pay is set to launch in Europe next week, with the UK linked up to be one of the first countries to receive the new technology, which will give Samsung devices users more choice in how to pay using their smartphone.

Spain will be the first market to see a launch, according to a leading Samsung executive speaking to City AM, with the service then set to spread to other countries soon after.

Coming soon

The European launch follows Samsung Pay’s initial release in South Korea, the United States and China, all of which have seen strong adoption for the service.

Samsung revealed that it has so far attracted five million registered users and processed $500 million (£340m) in payments since the launch last year.

First announced in March 2015, Samsung Pay looks to compete with the likes of Apple Pay, which Samsung estimates reaches only ten percent of merchants in the US alone.

It claims that Samsung Pay, which uses different technology to authorise its payments compared to Apple’s service, works at over 90 percent of the top 250 retailers and the vast majority of merchants, including small, local businesses.

Last month, the company revealed that it had partnered with a number of the leading manufacturers of Point of Sale (PoS) terminals to ensure Samsung Pay transactions run quickly and smoothly, hopefully signalling an end to customers standing awkwardly while the terminal processes a payment.

The service is supported by the Samsung’s newly-announced Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones, which went on sale in the UK last month, as well as the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and Gear S2 smartwatch.

In the UK, Samsung has already revealed that it has signed up a number of big names to partner with the launch, most notably Transport for London (TfL), which has been instrumental in getting both mobile and contactless payments into the public eye in the UK.

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