Report: Samsung Pay eyes new frontier

A planned expansion of Samsung Pay is the latest in a seemingly endless series of maneuvers made by mobile payment providers throughout 2015.



In an interview with Reuters, Thomas Ko, global co-manager of Samsung Pay, said U.S. consumers will be able to use the mobile wallet solution for online payments in 2016. In addition, Samsung will roll out Samsung Pay to a broader range of lower-priced phones in the U.S. in the coming year. Currently, it is only available as a built-in feature on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices.



Samsung Pay launched in the U.S. for in-store payments in September 2015 with a major advantage over competitors such as Apple Pay. Unlike other mobile wallets, Samsung works with both near field communication (NFC) and card readers with magnetic secure transmission (MST) technologies, which means it is already compatible with most POS terminals.



Thus, Samsung says that more retailers already accept Samsung Pay than any other mobile payment service. However, it only added the Verizon network in late October, and is accepted by fewer card issuers than leading mobile wallet solutions such as Apple Pay. Add in that Samsung Pay is only available on Samsung devices and competes on those devices with Android Pay, and the initial Samsung Pay U.S. user base is probably small, despite widespread acceptance.



In October, Samsung said the average U.S. user had made eight transactions in the first four weeks of availability. This strong start suggests potential. However, although no firm data on U.S. usage has been released since, there are no indicators that Samsung Pay has become a major presence in the fledgling mobile payment market.



And although Samsung Pay only launched here a few months ago, a number of competing solutions, most notably Walmart Pay, have been announced or released. Enabling Samsung Pay for online payment and on a wider array of phones are both smart attempts to bring it more into the daily lives of a larger assortment of consumers.



Especially with holiday shopping data indicating huge upswings in mobile e-commerce traffic and purchasing, online functionality is a must for Samsung Pay or any other mobile payment solution looking to make a dent in the U.S. market.