South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is expanding its mobile payment system to Singapore, Australia and Brazil, the firm announced yesterday at its CES 2016 press conference.
#SamsungPay will be coming soon to Australia, Singapore and Brazil in addition to the U.K, Spain and China. #CES2016 pic.twitter.com/anLDhVJcjJ
— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) January 5, 2016
In December 2015, a report from Zing suggested that the mobile payment system “is expected to appear soon in Vietnam,” Lê Khôi Nguyên, the head of Samsung Vina’s mobile products, told the service.
Samsung Pay launched in the US and South Korea in September last year, with plans to expand to China, Spain and Britain in early 2016. In China, Samsung is partnering with UnionPay, the country’s largest provider of bank card settlement services.
Samsung has reported strong response to its mobile payment system notably due to the fact that its technology is compatible with magnetic stripe card readers, which are already being widely used by retailers.
“There are approximately five times the number of locations accepting Samsung Pay than NFC-only solutions,” the company said.
Unlike competing products such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay supports both NFC-based mobile payments and magnetic stripe transmission (MST) for tap-to-pay functionality compatible with popular payment networks including Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Hence, the payment system is compatible with both new and older credit card terminals and does not require any special arrangements with retailers or new equipment.
Samsung Pay was developed from the intellectual property of LoopPay, a mobile payment startup that the firm acquired in February 2015 for about US$250 million, according to Recode.
In addition to its expansion plans, Samsung also said in a separate statement that its Gear S2 smartwatch will start supporting Samsung Pay in South Korea and the US beginning in early 2016.
Currently, Samsung Pay is available on Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus, and Note 5 smartphones. However, the firm is planning to expand its availability to lower-priced devices, according to reports from Reuters.
Thomas Ko, global co-general manager of Samsung Pay, told the news outlet that wider “handset availability of Samsung Pay as well as online payment support is coming soon.”
US$2 Billion Investment in Southern Vietnam
The news of Samsung Pay expanding to the Asia-Pacific region follows Samsung Asia’s approval from the Vietnamese government to raise its investment in an electronics plant from US$1.4 billion to US$2 billion.
Samsung Asia, a unit of the South Korean tech giant, was given the green light to increase its investment into Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon Hi-Tech Park, a capital that will be dedicated to the production of Samsung’s smart televisions and other electronic goods, a government official told Reuters.
Samsung, Vietnam’s number one foreign investor, has pledged to invest more than US$12 billion in the country.
Image credit: Samsung booth, Flickr.com.
