Samsung May Bring Samsung Pay to Rival Smartphones

Here’s an interesting move. According to Gadgets 360, the South Korean electronics juggernaut Samsung may bring Samsung Pay to non-Samsung smartphones:

After bringing Samsung Pay to non-premium smartphones in its portfolio, Samsung now has bigger ambitions for its mobile payments platform: ubiquitous presence. The top Android smartphone seller has held internal talks within the company and with OEMs about bringing Samsung Pay to high-end smartphones of other companies, a source familiar with the developments told Gadgets 360.

Samsung Pay is currently available only on premium Samsung smartphones. However, the talks did include adding the service to the company’s lower-tier offerings. Samsung’s mid-range phones – such as the new Galaxy J7 Pro – only support Samsung Pay Mini, a stripped-down version of the platform which doesn’t have Pay’s offline tap-and-pay capabilities.

How this could affect platforms such as Apply Pay and Android Pay is a little unclear. Neither of the two have anything near Samsung Pay’s offline capabilities, nor do they have the system’s broader functionality (Apply Pay and Android Pay only work on NFC-enabled terminals), so at the very least, the Korean’s have a huge advantage on the rest here.

Then again, they’ll still need their help:

To enable support for full-fledged Samsung Pay on rival’s smartphones, those companies need to add a specialised chip that enables MST technology on their handsets. For this, the source said, the company has held initial talks with other smartphone vendors in various markets. Samsung did not comment on Gadgets 360’s queries.

In any case, Samsung is already looking for alternatives. The company is currently exploring the feasibility of selling a puck-like accessory to bridge that technological barrier. Let’s see how that goes.

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