Samsung has released usage figures for Samsung Pay and announced it will enable online purchases to be made using Samsung Pay. How it will enable this online activity has not been stated:
“Samsung Electronics Co plans to expand its fledgling mobile payment service in the United States next year, allowing users to shop online and with more smartphones that support the electronic wallet.
Lower-priced Samsung phones will likely start offering the mobile wallet “within the next year,” Thomas Ko, global co-general manager of Samsung Pay, said in an interview. The service debuted in South Korea on just a handful of high-end Samsung phones, including the Galaxy Note 5, the Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6, and S6 Edge Plus.
Wider “handset availability of Samsung Pay as well as online payment support is coming soon,” he said late last week.
He did not comment on which other countries Samsung Pay would expand to.”
That said, Reuters went out on a limb and stated that Samsung Pay would compete with PayPal and Visa Checkout. Competing against the existing networks would be folly, since Samsung Pay would hit significant headwinds if US banks perceive it to be competitive to the existing international payment networks:
“By accepting payments online, Samsung Pay will compete with established rival PayPal Holdings Inc, as well as newcomers such as Visa Inc’s Visa Checkout.
Mobile wallets have struggled to find favor in the United States, which has also been slower than Europe and Asia to adopt technologies such as credit cards embedded with microchips.
Samsung Pay is already the most widely accepted mobile wallet in the United States because it is compatible with new and older credit card terminals and do not require any special arrangements with retailers, Ko said. For instance, shoppers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc or Target Corp can pay by just waving their smartphones with the app.
By contrast, Apple Pay, launched in September 2014, requires retailers to install new equipment that supports near-field communication (NFC) compatible with its service, which has hindered wider acceptance, consultants said.”
The article ends with a small stat that Samsung clearly hopes will convince onlookers that MST technology and the broader acceptance footprint it enables has driven greater consumer usage of mobile payments with this cherry picked nugget:
“Samsung Pay had an average of eight transactions per U.S. user within the first four weeks of its launch, the company said in October.”
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
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