SEOUL: South Korean multinational conglomerate company, Samsung is about to unveil its own mobile payments system to rival Apple Pay. Samsung Pay is said to launch with the sixth-generation Samsung Galaxy S, which is set to be unveiled next month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Reports made late last year that Samsung was in talks with mobile payment provider LoopPay for its own wireless wallet have been confirmed by South Korean publication DDaily, which says that the result of Samsung’s negotiations with LoopPay will be unveiled as Samsung Pay in the upcoming Galaxy S6 and the curved display Galaxy S Edge.
Details of how Samsung Pay will work are scant, but a look at LoopPay’s technology will give us an idea of how Samsung plans to upend Apple’s current mobile wallet. Unlike Apple Pay, which works only on NFC-enabled phones and point-of-sale systems, LoopPay’s technology supports both NFC and older magnetic stripes, which could give it an edge because retailers do not need to install new PoS terminals to adopt Samsung Pay and consumers do not have to upgrade their phones to use the payment system.