Samsung Pay Will Be Available in the Upcoming Samsung Smartwatch

Samsung Electronic announced that the company will be launching a mobile payment services which will be named Samsung Pay for its smartwatch in the second half of the year. Samsung Pay will be using near-field communication (NFC) technology to authorize a payment. Therefore, instead of taking out his or her smartphone, the user will just need to tap his or her smartwatch into the payment terminal in order to make payment. This can only work provided the payment terminal supports the NFC technology too.

The advantage of making Samsung Pay available on its smartwatch is for user’s convenience. For example, for users who like exercising outdoor, smartwatch is able to calculate the distance travelled, the calorie burned, give weather prediction and with the Samsung Pay feature included in the smartwatch, users can also purchase things like water or energy drink, without having to carry their wallet around while exercising.

Apple has similar payment service which is known as Apple Pay. The company is also planning to include Apple Pay feature on its smartwatches, Apple Watch. For every transaction that the user made using credit card, Apple will collect a fee of 0.15% of the total transaction value whereas for debit card, Apple will collect 0.5%.

Samsung Electronic also said that Samsung Pay mobile payments service which supports NFC technology will be available with selected partners only. However, there is no further information from the company regarding this matter.

Samsung Pay Will Be Available in the Upcoming Samsung Smartwatch

Samsung Plans to Launch Biometric Mobile Payment System by the End of the Month in South Korea

The announcement was made by Samsung SDS, an IT services subsidiary of Samsung Group. With the launching of Apple Pay, Samsung is planning to launch a fingerprint-based mobile payment system by the end of the month. Initially it will be launched in South Korea but the company also plans to roll it out globally. It is still unconfirmed whether it will be part of Samsung Pay or it will be an independent service.

Samsung has also joined Fast Identity Online Alliance(FIDO) as member with other members such as Samsung Electronics, Google, Microsoft, Visa and Paypal.  FIDO was established in 2012 to develop standards of verifying user’s identity when logging in to websites or online accounts as an alternative to keying in username and password. The proposed of such standards will be fingerprint scanners, voice and facial recognition, security tokens, near-field communication as well as one-time passwords.

Samsung has chosen fingerprint-based to reduce the needs of having to create username and passwords and remembering them in order to login into the account. A user can have multiple accounts in multiple websites and it will be difficult for them to memorize the usernames and passwords in case if each website is created under different usernames and passwords for the same user.

Other biometric authentication which is considered secure, for example fingerprint, iris and voice recognition.  They are also not easy to be hacked.  Fingerprint sensor was first implemented in Galaxy S5, however, the performance still below expectation and it is further improved in Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.

Samsung Plans to Launch Biometric Mobile Payment System by the End of the Month in South Korea

Google is Interested to Buy Softcard – A Mobile Payment Service Company

Mobile payment is becoming more popular these days. A few years ago, Google started this trend by launching Google Wallet then last year, Apple launched Apple Pay. However, it seems like not many people know about Softcard. Like the other two services, Softcard is also a mobile payment application that based on NFC. It is established by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon which originally goes by the name ISIS in 2010.

With the news that Softcard has laid off about 60 employees as well as has been in a consolidation phase earlier this month, it seems like it is having a financial difficulties.  On top of that, another source was saying that at one point the company’s burn rate was around half a million dollars per day or around $15 million per month.

There is rumor that the sale price can be as low as below $100 million. It seems like Google is interested to buy the company for its patents. Paypal and Microsoft have reported to also approach the company. Another possibility could be that in the event that external sale cannot be achieved, JV (Joint Venture) partners like AT&T or Verizon will take it under one of their wings since they are also have been looking for ways of developing their own wallet service for mobile devices.

Google is Interested to Buy Softcard – A Mobile Payment Service Company