Samsung Pay Gears Up for 2016

January 6, 2024 by

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Samsung Pay has made a lot of waves lately, but its availability in the United States has been a little less than clear.

New reports from Reuters suggest that’s about to change. In 2016, Samsung Pay is looking to expand its user network by introducing availability on lower-end phones and an enhanced online payment system, which would place them head-to-head with services like PayPal and Visa Checkout.

Back in 2015, Samsung brought its service to South Korea, and featured it as a big part of its flagship lineup, including the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus and Galaxy Note 5.

Samsung recently revealed its plan to roll out its service to 6 additional countries in 2016 - Spain, China, the UK, Brazil, Singapore, and Australia are set to receive the mobile wallet in the coming months.

Samsung’s Injong Rhee, currently in charge of Samsung Pay, noted that the sales team had doubts about Samsung Pay’s ability to succeed, but that the numbers that followed—including improved handset sales—put much of this to rest.

Samsung Pay has one critical advantage over many of its rivals, in its use of magnetic secure transmission (MST) as a communications vector between the program and point of sale (POS) terminals.

This allows it to work with any terminal not operating with near-field communications (NFC), and that makes it easily accessible with magnetic-stripe focused terminals, still widely in use in the United States despite moves to a chip-and-PIN system.

Without the need to establish arrangements, Samsung Pay users can literally walk into the market and use the app as readily as a credit or debit card.

Still, this is a very crowded market, and given the lead the other firms have in getting entrenched, Samsung may have a tougher sale than expected on hand. With Samsung’s huge user base, however, a crowded market may not be that big a problem.

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