Mobile wallets without payments continue to be a trend as Samsung announces its Samsung Wallet, which is essentially an Android version of Apple’s Passbook.
From The Next Web:
Unveiling Wallet at its Developer Day at Mobile World Congress, Samsung explains that it has launched the tool with an open API, allowing users to save tickets, boarding passes, coupons and similar cards to the app and access them from a central hub.
While the Samsung Wallet can deliver time and location-based information, it still lacks the ability to make payments, but it does have NFC capabilities. There is speculation that Samsung maybe be able to work with Visa to offer NFC payments in the future.
The fundamental question remains whether or not these ‘wallets’ are worth a user’s time if they cannot use the wallet to pay for anything. One wonders whether or not a collection of high-resolution pictures of loyalty card barcodes could do the same job just as effectively.
Click here to read more from The Next Web.