Published in Mobiles

Samsung working on mobile payments service

by on17 December 2014



Announcement expected in first half of 2015

Samsung is reportedly trying to strike a deal US-based LoopPay, a mobile payments startup. Re/code reports the deal could still fall apart, but Samsung already has a prototype of the payments system.

The news comes on the heels of the Apple Pay launch, which was probably the biggest news to come out of Cupertino this year. The idea of using mobile wallets to replace credit cards and loyalty points schemes is not new - Google Wallet has been around for ages, but so far it has failed to gain much traction.

If Samsung is indeed working on a rival solution, that would be bad news for Google, as Samsung is currently the biggest Android phone maker. If one in three mobiles ran Samsung's digital wallet instead of Google Wallet, that would create even more fragmentation and make life miserable for Google's offering.

While Apple Pay is off to a good start in the US, there is a bit of a problem. Apple's market share in the rest of the world is quite a bit smaller. Convincing merchants to embrace a service available only on iPhones isn't much of a challenge in the US, but doing so in Spain, Germany or Brazil could prove tricky.

Apple's market share in many markets is in the low teens, a far cry from the US and Canada. Google and Samsung have a good chance to enter untapped markets, leveraging their market share the same way Apple did in North America.

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