Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Samsung Pay launched in South Korea three years ago Monday, and on Tuesday Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. marked the anniversary by releasing some numbers for the mobile-payments platform.
Widely known as one of three “Pays” that rely on near-field communication technology for in-store transactions (Apple Pay and Google Pay are the other two), Samsung Pay now works with about 2,000 financial institutions spread across 24 geographical markets, its parent company said. Samsung did not release a user count but said the service has processed 1.3 billion transactions since its launch.
“Since we launched Samsung Pay three years ago, we have been dedicated to delivering a mobile wallet platform that is simple, secure, and works almost anywhere,” said DJ Koh, president and chief executive of Samsung’s IT & mobile communications division, in a statement. “And we’re not limiting ourselves to a mobile wallet.”
Koh cited such features as Samsung Rewards and ATM transaction capability, both of which are available in the U.S. market, where Samsung Pay launched a few weeks after the August 2015 launch in South Korea.
Samsung has also worked to gain partnerships with other mobile-payment services, including Alipay and WeChat Pay in China and PayPal in the United States. The PayPal deal, struck in July 2017, gave Samsung Pay entrée to e-commerce merchants through PayPal’s Braintree processing unit, and opened a window for PayPal into physical stores by riding in the Samsung Pay wallet.
As with Apple Inc. and Apple Pay, Samsung Pay is available as a feature exclusively on its parent’s line of mobile phones. But unlike Apple Pay and Google Pay, Samsung Pay offers the ability to work with conventional mag-stripe terminals in addition to those fitted for NFC. This capability depends on technology called magnetic secure transmission, which Samsung acquired when it bought a mobile-payments startup called LoopPay Inc. early in 2015.
