By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 3rd, 2023
Samsung Pay follows its main rivals Apple Pay and Android Pay to leverage the Australian market.
Samsung wants to keep pace with its rivals Apple Pay and Android Pay and launches its mobile payments service in Australia on June 15. Samsung developed its contactless payments platform after the acquisition of LoopPay company in February last year. Samsung Pay was tested in Korea in July 2015 and later expanded to the United States, China, Europe, and Singapore.
Samsung first unveiled its intention to launch Samsung Pay in Australia in February this year. American Express and Citibank are named as most possible partners.
According to Samsung, its mobile payment services will be available on the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge flagship handsets, Gear S2 Smartwatch as well as on older devices such as Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Note 5, A5 and A7.
Samsung Pay can boast of increased three-level security including fingerprints, tokenisation, and the company’s Knox hardware partitioning of devices. With a help of wireless near-field communications, it can interact with the magentic secure transmission on point-of-sale machines and replicate the card strip swipes used by older terminals.
Samsung’s rivals have already had a head start on Australian market. Apple Pay launched its services there last November while Android Pay joined a little bit later.
The launch of Samsung Pay in Australia follows the recent appearance of the payment service in Europe. Spain became the first European country to introduce the service after successful launches in South Korea, the United States and China. Unlike Australia, Spanish market offers Samsung Pay as the first and only mobile payment service of such a kind.
“We are proud that Spain is the first European market to introduce Samsung Pay, an innovative new service that we believe will mark a turning point both in Spaniards’ payments behaviour and the evolution of the payments market as a whole,” commented Celestino García, Corporate Vice President, Samsung Spain. “The opportunity for Samsung Pay in Spain is significant, due to the high smartphone penetration rate and the digitalisation of the banking sector. Moreover, according to recent research commissioned by Samsung, nearly six in 10 Spaniards are interested in incorporating a secure, simple and widely accepted payments service like Samsung Pay into their lives.”
Samsung Pay already has a strong backing of multiple partners. It supports eligible credit and debit cards from more than 200 major global and regional banks. Besides, Samsung Pay is compatible with such payments networks as American Express, China UnionPay, MasterCard, Visa Inc. and Alipay.
“Our goal with Samsung Pay is to drive and lead innovation in mobile commerce, giving consumers a safer, smarter and better mobile wallet,” said Victor Kim, Global Director, Samsung Pay. “Samsung operates an open model of partnership and collaboration to deliver the best possible customer experience. With Samsung Pay, we’re confident that we’re providing Spanish customers with the mobile payments service that they’re looking for.”
