Mobile payment mechanisms have been around for a while already, but they have not been all that prevalent worldwide, either. Many people still prefer holding on to cold, hard cash when making payments, and credit cards are yet another hugely popular form of payment -- what with the new generation of credit cards being contactless as well with Visa’s PayWave and MasterCard’s PayPass. However, when it comes to NFC-enabled devices such as smartphones that offer mobile payment, the number of vendors are not too many yet. Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are two popular names, and it seems that Apple has decided not to launch Samsung Pay on the iPhone.
The reason behind that is rather obvious, as Samsung Pay would be a direct rival to Apple Pay, which is Apple’s very own version of mobile payment. This meant that even a stripped down version of Samsung Pay was not given the nod of approval by Apple, now how about that? It might seem to be a whole lot like playground politics to the end consumer, but it does make sense as Apple would like to protect their own turf as well as promote their own version of mobile payment among its users. Samsung would most probably do the same if it were the other way around.
The stripped down version of Samsung’s app happens to be known as Samsung Pay Mini. Originally making its rounds in the news during the summer, Samsung Pay Mini is an online-only version of Samsung’s mobile wallet. With Samsung Pay Mini, you are able to make payment for your purchases with a single tap or click with your smartphone, hence reducing wait times at the checkout line. Of course, this loses out to Amazon’s recent attempt at grocery shopping in the form of Amazon Go, where there aren’t even any checkout lines to queue up in. However, the idea of Samsung Pay Mini is far more scalable and applicable to a slew of different situations that Amazon Go is unable to be applicable in.
The South Korean conglomerate wanted to deliver Samsung Pay to iOS and Android platforms originally, but it looks like Apple has thrown a spanner in the works. After all, Apple has to concentrate on their own Apple Pay, which has more or less made some headway in certain business establishments that accept the form of contactless payments.
This rejection from Apple where Samsung Pay Mini is concerned will not faze Samsung though. Samsung will now move on and shift their focus on the Android platform. This is a budding market for sure, and even with the Android market covered, it ought to be more than a decent bite into the economic pie for Samsung already.
So far, there has been no global launch of Samsung Pay just yet, but it should be one of the key strategies that we can look out for in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone. The next flagship device from Samsung is tipped for a spring 2017 release, and Samsung Pay’s advantage is its ability to take advantage of older magnetic strip terminals in addition to NFC-enabled ones -- something Apple Pay cannot. The UK is expected to experience Samsung Pay next year as opposed to the original plans for a 2016 roll out.
