Samsung is all set to introduce its long-awaited payment system ‘Samsung Pay’, in India in the first half of 2017. Samsung had started testing the Samsung Pay service in India in December 2016. As of now, the service is available in Australia, Brazil, Canada (currently limited to CIBC customers), China, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and the US.
Recently, Samsung had started rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge in India, which included the Samsung Pay App and after upgrading to Nougat, users are reportedly getting a message that says “The future of payments is coming soon”.
As per reports, Samsung will initially release Samsung Pay service in India in partnership with American Express and will be followed by Mastercard and Visa.
The Samsung Pay will be available only to its elite smartphone users, which includes Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and Galaxy Note 5 smartphones. As a result, it may be an uphill task Samsung’s wallet service to make inroads in the fast expanding Indian digital payment market, in comparison with other Indian e-wallets services like Paytm, Freecharge and Mobikwik, which have seen a tremendous growth post demonetization, in terms of facilitating cashless payments in India. Incidentally, all the Indian e-wallets services are available to all smartphones ranging from low-end to high-end devices, so they would have an edge over Samsung Pay in India.
Those who are not aware of this service, Samsung Pay is basically a payment platform that allows users to pay for goods and services through a high-end Samsung device instead of swiping a debit or credit card. The payment uses biometric authentication and NFC in order to make a payment.