Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Wallet are some of the largest used payment solutions in the US, Europe and some Asian countries. The simple fact that a payment can be made through NFC and one fingerprint confirmation is luring to the developed nations.
ICICI Bank launched a similar service for contactless transactions, ‘Tap n Pay’, while Mahindra Group launched MoboMoney, but they could not compete with the likes of Paytm, MobiKwik and FreeCharge, as these digital wallets made it even easier for retailers to integrate these payment solutions.
Now, Samsung is going to launch its own payment platform, Samsung Pay. A very popular platform in Korea, South-East Asia and the US, Samsung Pay is a preferred choice for Android users in these countries.
The leak came about from the latest Android update to Samsung Galaxy Note 5, as reported by Sammobile. The update adds Samsung Pay application to the smartphone, which means that the company is planning to launch the service in India quite soon.
What is Samsung Pay?
Samsung Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by Samsung Electronics that lets users make payments using compatible phones and other Samsung-produced devices. The service supports contactless payments using near-field communications but also incorporates an electromagnetic transmission system that allows contactless payments to be used on payment terminals that only support magnetic stripe cards.
You can store your cards or rewards on Samsung Pay and redeem them at the store you are purchasing from. It is as simple as paying through Paytm, in addition, you have an extra layer of security like credit cards.
While there is no timeline yet, Samsung is known to have been working on this since December 2016. The company has been testing the application in India for over two months now, and could possibly release it in a couple of more months.
According to a few leaks on Mashable, Samsung is partnering with American Express in the beginning to start the service. Subsequently, Samsung Pay will partner with Visa and Mastercard. These three are the largest payment gateways around the well, but for India, the company might also want to look at RuPay.
Possible hurdles and developments
The one thing that will definitely become an obstacle in India will be the upgradation of the POS terminals at all the merchants in India to support Samsung Pay. Samsung has a huge user base in India, but is will be difficult to convince the shop owners and retailers to update their POS machines just to integrate one more platform.
Demonetization has played an important role in getting mobile wallets up to speed, so it is a good time to launch a service like this. However, Samsung Pay works on NFC(Near Field Communication) technology, as well as MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) that allows the phone to send a magnetic signal to the receiver.
A user can store their credit cards, debit cards on Samsung Pay, bring the smartphone near the POS machine and authenticate the transactions via either a pin or fingerprint sensor. This technology is simple to use, but needs rehauling of a lot of POS machines in India, since they do not support NFC-enabled transactions.
Also, Samsung has over 2.5 million Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and Galaxy Note 5 and only these smartphones will support Samsung Pay. So budget Samsung smartphone users will be left disappointed.
Apple is known to have been showing interest in India, so it is possible that the company will launch its Apple Pay solution here, while Google has already confirmed that Google Wallet will make its way here, but there is no timeline yet. This opens up a huge business in India and we hope these companies have thought the hurdles and issues well.
Source: Mashable
It’s good news to know that someone is *attempting* this,…. – but no way are the retailers going to upgrade their POSes just for one company…..WHOEVER it might be…. :(