Samsung happens to be the leader in the smartphone industry in terms of revenue and annual shipments. Thus, the company is always working out ways to stay ahead of its competitors and one way it has successfully done that is by integrating its flagship models with Samsung Pay – its e-payment wallet. The tech giant recently took it a step further by rolling out the Samsung Pay services for its mid-range Galaxy models. Samsung is now rumoured as planning to extend the mobile payment platform to high-end smartphones that are manufactured by its rivals such as Apple, Huawei and others.
Gadgets 360 quotes a source familiar with the matter as disclosing that there have been internal talks within the company as well as with other OEMs about the possibility of launching Samsung Pay on high-end models manufactured by other phone makers. The move is targeted at expanding Samsung Pay which is even still not available on all Samsung models. Even among the mid-range models which were recently integrated with Samsung Pay, the services available to owners of such models are trimmed down from those available on the flagship models. Some new Samsung mid-budget models in India like the Galaxy J7 Pro and J7 Max that recently launched in India, only support a stripped down version of the service, called Samsung Pay Mini.
According to the report, Samsung Pay Mini comes with support for wallet apps and the ability to store and use credit card information but it lacks features such as offline tap-and-pay ability seen on full-fledged Samsung Pay service. Tap-and-pay brings flexibility to payment services by enabling customers to use their phone with virtually any card swiping terminal. However, sources also hint that Samsung is planning to roll out full services on its mid-range smartphones. The issue is the inability of the processors on current Samsung mid-range models to support full-fledged Samsung Pay services. That, according to inside sources, will be tackled on new mid-range smartphones which would come with processors similar to the Exynos 8895 and Snapdragon 835 found inside Galaxy S8 and select other smartphones.
In order to enable Samsung Pay on smartphones manufactured by other OEMs, the phone manufacturers need to add a specialised chip that enables MST technology on their high-end smartphones. In addition, the tech giant is said to be exploring the possibility of selling a specialised accessory that makes Samsung Pay fully compatible with most Android phones. The accessory may look like the LoopPay Card which is a battery-powered plastic puck that at present supports only a handful of smartphones. So, the integration of Samsung Pay on other Android phones could come in either form and a target has been set for its implementation which is mid-2018. Samsung is yet to respond to an inquiry made about this latest rumour, either confirming or issuing a denial. But it looks promising if it turns out to be true. What we can’t say is how the company hope to profit from such enormous venture.
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