2016 is certainly positioned to be the year of the mobile payment app war. New options will be introduced and those already in market will battle to achieve greater adoption and increasing the number of locations where their app can be used. Samsung is firing the first shot by announcing the ability to use Samsung Pay for on-line payments in addition to in-store point of sale capabilities. As reported in Slash Gear:
Samsung Pay’s appeal on those devices, (Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy Note 5, and Galaxy S6 edge+) aside from NFC support, will be this upcoming online shopping support as well. Using the service to pay both for on the spot retail purchases as well as online goods could help make it even more accepted both by merchants as well as users. Both Apple Pay and, more recently, Android Pay allow online shopping payments to some extent as well. Details of which merchants and which countries will support this upcoming Samsung Pay feature are still unknown at this point.
Samsung Pay certainly has the battlefield advantage with a much broader merchant acceptance than the “Pays” relying of NFC or QR codes, albeit limited in the number of phones capable of executing a transaction. Adding on-line acceptance will help. The next battle will then focus on adding loyalty schemes. This could prove more difficult for Samsung Pay. The retailer and bank based payment apps have the infrastructure and business model to support loyalty options. For mobile wallets dependent on NFC, there is at least some tacit relationship with the merchant. If a merchant has turned on the capability to accept NFC POS transactions, they most likely did that for the express purpose of taking Apple Pay and Android Pay. Most merchants are completely unaware that their terminals, regardless if they are NFC enabled or not, are already capable of accepting Samsung Pay. So there are no clear winners yet and the battles continu
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Group
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