Samsung Pay reached 2.5 million users in India, one million more than it had in mid-September, a company official said on Wednesday. The South Korean tech giant concluded the summer with a 47 percent market share in India, positioning itself to become an even more dominant force in the mobile payments segment in the South Asian country. Samsung’s service is presently available on 26 devices in India, up from ten when it officially debuted in the country in early 2017. It’s currently supported by ten banks and seven more local card issuers, with the company repeatedly signaling it’s preparing a more aggressive expansion going forward. Out of 20 nations in which the mobile payments platform is available, India is its third largest market by the number of users, being behind second-placed Russia and South Korea in first.
India is believed to have the potential to become the phone maker’s largest Samsung Pay market, with its residents embracing contactless payments more quickly than consumers in most other countries, partially due to a 2016 demonetization of some popular banknotes that led to a nationwide shortage of cash. This state of affairs opened many new business opportunities in India, prompting Samsung to ramp up its efforts to launch a mobile payments solution in the country. Apart from flagship devices like the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, and the Galaxy Note 8, Samsung Pay is also available on some of the firm’s mid-range offerings like the Galaxy J7 Pro and Galaxy J7 Max, with some insiders previously suggesting that entry-level Android devices are also set to become part of the growing ecosystem in the near future.
Samsung is also said to be experimenting with bringing the service to third-party devices but no concrete details on the matter have yet been shared by the Seoul-based original equipment manufacturer. While the company’s Android payments platform is attracting new users at a rapid pace in India, its local smartphone sales are experiencing a more modest growth that’s been getting outpaced by Xiaomi for several consecutive quarters, with Samsung now being in danger of losing its title of the largest phone vendor in the country over the final quarter of the year.