Samsung may open up its payment service to third-party OEMs at some point

Samsung Pay is one of the more interesting contactless payment solution to come along in a while and probably the most ambitious one as well. If you haven't heard about it yet, it aims to successfully trick almost any traditional swipe payment terminal and transmit a secure version of you card information to it. The whole idea is almost too good to be true, but Samsung has made the magnetic field trickery possible and it is already enjoying quite a lot of popularity in Korea and the US.

Now, in a new development, Samsung has disclosed some of its thoughts on the future of Samsung Pay and it appears opening up the platform to other manufacturers and non-Samsung devices in the future is possible. The information comes from Injong Rhee, executive vice president and head of enterprise business at Samsung’s mobile division, so it is as credible as it gets. However, he also stressed the fact that currently the main focus is on rolling out the platform on various markets and building on its initial success – over one million subscribers and $88 million worth of payments already serviced.

The prospect of Samsung Pay transcending outside the Korean giant's own device lineup is truly exciting and could potentially boost its popularity immensely. Sadly, that is about all we currently know on the matter. The system does require additional specialized hardware that currently only a select few high-end Samsung devices have, so opening the full set of features that Samsung Pay offers to other OEM's would also require licensing or selling the hardware component. However, Samsung Pay does also utilize a more conventional contactless payment technique as well - namely NFC. That means using any NFC-enabled mobile phone for the process would be possible. During the interview Injong also mentioned that the company intends to start bringing Samsung Pay to its non-flagship models as well, so we have that to look forward to.

Here's to hoping more info comes shortly and Samsung does start working towards opening the platform soon.

Source | Via