Samsung Pay has been used to conduct roughly 100 million transactions in its first year, the South Korean electronics vendor said.
“Since its introduction a year ago, Samsung Pay continues to lead mobile payments by providing services that are simple, secure and virtually anywhere,” Samsung executive Injong Rhee said in a press release. “Our ambition to reach a world without wallets continues to draw ever closer, and this strong consumer adoption signals a shift in behavior and demonstrates the continued enthusiasm for a safer, smarter and better mobile wallet.”
Samsung Pay launched in South Korea a year ago and has since rolled out to seven markets including the United States, China, Spain and Brazil. The offering is supported by more than 440 banks, the company said, and is available on several high-end and mid-range phones including the Galaxy Note7, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy A9.
The mobile wallet also supports gift cards and coupon reductions, and can conduct transactions at the point of sale via NFC or chip-or-swipe payment terminals.
Samsung is hoping to compete against Apple and Google -- among others -- in an emerging mobile payments market, and the handset manufacturer brings some noteworthy weapons to the fight. The world’s No. 1 smartphone vendor shipped 80 million units during the most recent quarter, according to Canalys, and it has a massive worldwide footprint. Samsung also posted $5.2 billion during the quarter due largely to the success of its flagship Galaxy S7 phone.
Samsung’s LoopPay technology mimics traditional magnetic-stripe cards, enabling retailers to use existing point-of-sale equipment rather than installing new terminals. Bloomberg reported in March that Samsung Pay had grown faster than Apple Pay since its U.S. launch last September, keeping pace with Google’s Android Pay, which came to market around the same time.
The market for mobile payments in the U.S. remains a very small sliver of the overall payments market, however. A Walker Sands survey released in June found that only 1 percent of respondents said they prefer to use mobile to pay at the retail counter; the same percentage said they prefer to use mobile payments at a bar, restaurant or grocery store. It’s clear that mobile payments providers, merchants and marketers still have a lot of work to do to convince Americans to reach for their phones rather than credit cards or cash at the retail counter.
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- see this Samsung announcement
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