South Korean smartphone manufacturing company, Samsung on Sunday announced the launch of its payment service called Pay, which will allow you to pay for goods and services by waving your smartphone near the register instead of swiping your credit card. The company also unveiled the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, which will be the first set of smartphones to boast of the Pay feature.
The new service will first be launched in South Korea and the United States in the summer, with Europe and China joining those two countries later, according to CNET.
“Samsung Pay will reinvent how people pay for goods and services and transform how they use their smartphones,” JK Shin, co-CEO who runs the IT and mobile divisions at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.”
Apple launched Apple Pay last year, and has since gained a lot of popularity, which seems to have encouraged some other players to join or start considering joining the tech giant in launching a similar service. Samsung will hope that its new feature will build customer loyalty and help stay ahead of competition in a market that is already stiff.
Towards the end of February, Google announced the acquisition of Softcard in its bid to improve Wallet service. The deal to acquire the payment service which was entered into with three telecom giants Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, will see Google Wallet preinstalled on all Google Android devices in the US from later this year.
The South Korean smartphone giant, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of smartphones, is confident that it has an edge with the system because it allows Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge to integrate with many more merchants and stores. The system according to the report will use a “near-field communication or NFC chip to talk with compatible registers.” That is now all, however, as the service also users a LoopPay technology known as Magnetic Secure Transmission that works by holding the phone near a traditional card swipe reader, which will make it compatible with virtually every payment terminal available. The technology, which LoopPay comes with will make it a lot easier for retailers to support the platform.
Though, no partners have mentioned specifically by Samsung, MasterCard will provide support when the service eventually launches in the summer, according to Business Insider. Other partners that may likely join Samsung Pay when it launches include; Visa, American Express, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.
