Last night, or early this morning depending on where you are in the world, it was confirmed that the Galaxy S4 is being announced and unveiled on March 14th in New York City. Now we are hearing more and more about new features for the Galaxy S4, one is the new ROAM Integration agreement that Samsung and Visa now has. It’ll be very similar to Google Wallet and ISIS. So it’s pretty likely that the carriers here in the US will block it, unfortunately. That would be because they are pushing ISIS, except for Sprint.
The big difference with ROAM is that the APIs banks and merchants will use for accepting payments will come from Visa, and will supposedly offer higher security than what Google Wallet and ISIS has. Samsung’s newest Galaxy S phone will have NFC-enabled payments through ROAM alongside Visa’s NFC software and PayWave application. With Samsung expecting to sell around 100 million of these devices, that’ll put NFC payments in a lot of hands. Hopefully that can make NFC payments more main stream than it is today. According to Visa, they have been in talks with “9 out of the top 10 handset makers” to get this NFC/payment combo shipped on as many devices as possible. They’ve already got 55 approved with 55 more in line. That’s some pretty impressive work from Visa.
So far we haven’t seen much from Google Wallet or ISIS in terms of making significant changes to revolutionize NFC or mobile payments, but it looks like Visa is well on its way in doing so. Of course,Visa made a great choice by partnering with Samsung first, since they are the top selling manufacturer right now.
So the countdown begins for the Galaxy S4, about 18 more days until the big event in New York City. How many of you are excited to see what Samsung has to show off in their 2013 Galaxy S phone? Once again it’s the most anticipated phone of the year, and with good reason. Let us know in the comments below if you’re interested in the Galaxy S4.