Mobile payments have been the next big thing coming for a long time now, and despite Google’s earlier failure with Google Wallet, Apple Pay seems to be something of a small success for Apple, and Samsung is joining in as well. 2015 seemed like the year it became cool to put your brand name in front of the word ‘Pay’ and we now have Android Pay, Apple Pay and of course Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay was announced much earlier this year, and while Samsung have been testing it for quite some time now, it’s currently undergoing ‘finishing touches’ according to Korean media, and it could end up being one of the world’s safest payment methods.
According to the Korea Herald, Samsung is “putting the last touches” on Samsung Pay, after a successful trip of Samsung Card along with card issuers in the region. Samsung Card is one of South Korea’s largest card issuers and a trail of Samsung Pay is said to start soon as a result of the successful trial. Samsung has already partnered with MasterCard and VISA so when the service launches it should do so with a wide variety of card issuers supporting the service. Where security is concerned, it looks like Samsung Pay might have the upper hand over its rivals. Not only does it use NFC and tokenization so that Samsung never knows your card information, the devices also emulate the magnetic connection that a card would when swiped through the card machine. This not only makes things more secure, but should make Samsung Pay easier to adopt when it launches towards the end of this year.
With Apple Pay now available in the US, and starting to become available in parts of Europe, Samsung Pay will have its work cut out for it. Especially as, just like Apple Pay, it’ll only be available on a couple of different devices. We should hear more about Samsung Pay during Samsung’s event on August 13th, where it looks all but set for them to release the new Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 a little earlier than expected.