Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By Kevin Woodward
@DTPaymentNews
Consumers with Samsung Pay mobile-wallet accounts will be able to use them as a payment method for online transactions thanks to a partnership with Masterpass, MasterCard Inc.’s digital wallet, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced Tuesday at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas.
MasterCard cardholders will be able to use Samsung Pay to shop using Masterpass starting in 2017. To use the service, consumers select the Masterpass button on a participating merchant’s e-commerce checkout page. That generates a message on the Samsung Pay-enabled Samsung smart phone asking the consumer to confirm the transaction by touching the phone’s fingerprint sensor. The transaction completes using the payment card and shipping information stored in Samsung Pay.
Unlike Apple Pay, which requires Apple Inc.’s Safari browser, Samsung Pay Web-based purchases are not tied to a specific browser because of the Masterpass acceptance.
Consumers will know they can use their Samsung Pay accounts because the Masterpass checkout button will have a line of text beneath it indicating they can use the mobile wallet, Elle Kim, vice president for Samsung Pay, tells Digital Transactions News.
“We are trying to create a recognized (consumer) experience,” Kim says. After the first use of Samsung Pay via Masterpass the consumer service will recognize a returning customer, she says. Samsung Pay will use tokenization and encryption technology for these Web-based transactions.
In-app payment using Samsung Pay is arriving in November for apps from retailers such as Velocity, Raise, Hello Vino, and Touch of Modern.
Samsung also announced that Samsung Pay will be able to locate deals and coupons from nearby stores beginning in November via a Deals feature.
The offers component will further distinguish Samsung Pay, Kim says. “If you compare the first-generation wallets, they all look kind of the same,” she says. As mobile wallets mature, they will build out more features, like Samsung Pay is doing. It’s about creating a better engagement between the consumer and the merchant with Samsung Pay as a conduit, Kim says.
Samsung Pay’s strategy of adding payment methods beyond the in-store tap-and-go configuration echoes that of Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay with its in-app and browser-based payments capability.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit announced Monday that Android Pay struck similar deals with MasterCard to use Masterpass and with Visa Inc. to use Visa Checkout for browser-based payments. Consumers with Masterpass or Visa Checkout accounts can link them with Android Pay. The service is expected to be available in early 2017. For now, it will be limited to Google’s Chrome browser, Vish Shastry, Visa head of product strategy for Visa Digital Solutions, tells Digital Transactions News.
As for Samsung Pay in-store transactions, 72% of them made at the top 30 U.S. retailers used the wallet’s magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology. Samsung Pay, in addition to enabling contactless payments in stores via near-field communication (NFC) technology, allows users to make payments with MST, a radio-field technology that mimics mag-stripe reads.
More than 500 banks and credit unions support Samsung Pay, which represents more than 85% of the U.S. credit and debit card market, Samsung says.
