Skip to main content

Samsung planning to launch Apple Pay competitor, says report

Samsung planning to launch Apple Pay competitor, says report

/

The company is in reported talks with mobile payments startup LoopPay

Share this story

Apple Pay may soon have a new challenger. Recode is reporting that Samsung is in talks with mobile payments startup LoopPay about building a Apple Pay-like solution to Samsung phones next year. The service would allow users of certain Samsung phones to wave their device to make a payment in stores, giving Samsung a competition to Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

So far, Apple Pay has been a complete success for the company. Apple told The New York Times Apple Pay now supports nearly 90 percent of the cards that make up the credit card purchase volume in the US, and is continuing to add more banks, including TD Bank North America, BB&T, and Commerce Bank, which are a few of the 10 banks who will begin to support Apple Pay today.

Samsung's system would be just one of many mobile payments options

For Samsung, getting into the mobile payments game is crucial for the company, who likes to have its own software to compete with whatever Google or Apple may have. Users of Samsung's Android phones would have another mobile payments option to choose from, with Google Wallet and others like Softcard, which is forced on Samsung devices by carriers.

LoopPay is an interesting choice for a partner — while it does work for mobile payments, our review of the LoopPay ChargeCase and key fob found them to be complicated to explain to cashiers and cumbersome to deal with over time. Since our review, LoopPay has released an updated version of its ChargeCase.

In response to the report, LoopPay told The Verge “we’re aware of the speculation that LoopPay is working with a potential handset manufacturer partner... We do not comment on speculation about the future of the company.”

Recode did note that the deal may still fall apart. Samsung has not yet responded to a request for comment.