Samsung has filed for a patent for a new feature of its mobile payment system, Samsung Pay, designed to let users share their previous purchase and payment transactions using the service to their social media accounts. The patent document, submitted to the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS), calls the new feature “Samsung Pay Story” and describes it as a way to let other people know about your buying experiences. It was not specified in the document when this feature gets to land on Samsung Pay, but it is supposed to launch on the payment system as part of a future update to the service.
The South Korean tech giant has yet to comment on why it has developed Samsung Pay Story, but industry watchers are speculating that the goal of the feature is to help boost the popularity of Samsung Pay through various social networking sites. As a matter of fact, Samsung is planning on holding a campaign called “Pay Story with Celebrities” in a bid to attract more people to try out the new feature and incorporate it into their purchasing experience. It’s a sort of social media tool focused on payment transactions, though only time will tell what Samsung plans to do with the feature in terms of service expansion in the future should Samsung Pay Story end up materializing soon. High-profile users will have the option to include a snapshot and rating in their purchase before sharing the transaction with other people. Users will also have the ability to select a specific detail of the transaction to be shared on social media so that their privacy remains protected to a certain degree.
It remains unclear at this point of time what Samsung intends to accomplish with the new feature over the long term, but the social nature of Samsung Pay may lend some credence to the idea that it is aimed at helping Samsung launch its own social network to compete with current social media titans including Facebook and Twitter. Already, Samsung Pay is gaining traction on a worldwide basis, especially in India where the payment platform has reached at least 2.5 million users as of November of this year. It now remains to be seen how the Indian market responds to Samsung Pay Story, provided it hits the payment service in the future.