Samsung Pay hits China five weeks after Apple launches mobile wallet app on mainland
Both expected to struggle to compete with Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Wallet, which are ‘OS-agnostic’ and work with all smartphones
Samsung launched its mobile wallet service in China today in co-operation with UnionPay, the country’s only domestic bank card organisation, five weeks after rival Apple launched Apple Pay on the mainland.
This now allows users of Samsung’s Galaxy S series of smartphones to link their bank or credit cards to their mobile wallet so they can use their device to make payments in-store.
All that is required is for the phone to be held near a UnionPay payment terminal, after which the transaction must be authenticated with a fingerprint scan, also using their handset.
Samsung said earlier that its mobile payments service could potentially be accepted at 30 million merchants worldwide. Its near-universal acceptance is possible because of Samsung Pay’s ability to work with magnetic secure transmission technology, which allows merchants to process transactions wirelessly via electronic signals even if the payment terminal is not equipped with near-field communication (NFC) capabilities.
But Samsung may still face an uphill struggle in attracting users, especially as the company is facing slowing demand for its handsets. Although it was ranked the top smartphone brand in 2012 and 2013, the company failed to make the top five in China last year.
