Samsung has finally launched in China its mobile wallet payment service, Samsung Pay, in collaboration with the country's local vendor UnionPay. Shoppers can use their smartphones to pay for purchases rather than use their debit or credit cards.
China which is the largest smartphone market in the world promises of big business opportunity for payment systems with the use of smartphones. Samsung Pay and Apple Pay which was launched in China last month will now be competing with Alibaba's Alipay that currently controls China's electronic payments market.
Samsung Electronics said that Samsung Pay is now available on a series of smartphones including Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. It supports select debit and credit cards of nine major Chinese banks including China Everbright Bank, China CITIC Bank and China Construction Bank, as reported by BBC News.
According to Engadget, the giant electronics company considers the possibility of including more phones with fingerprint readers later such as the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, A5, A7 and A9 that were already tested in the public beta and goes without saying that such rooted devices won't work with Samsung Pay.
Based on the latest report of the local payment ecosystem from the Chinese government, in the third quarter of 2015 alone the state recorded of 4.54 million mobile payment transactions, involving an astonishing total of 18.17 trillion yuan or about $2.8 trillion. That would be a 253.68% growth year on year, no wonder Apple and Samsung wanted to have a share in the mobile-payment service market.
"The reception of Samsung Pay since its launch has been extremely positive and the service has already seen tremendous success in terms of availability and adoption by consumers," Injong Rhee, the global chief of Samsung Pay, said in a statement.
Samsung Pay which was launched in the U.S. last September, doesn't need NFC technology and can operate with any magnetic-strip card reader. Samsung's mobile payment system is expected to launch as well this year in Canada, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Singapore and the UK, CNET reports.
With the launch of Samsung Pay in China, many consumers will now be able to pay using their Samsung smartphones provided that those are compatible with Samsung mobile payment service. Samsung Pay will compete with Apple Pay and Alipay.
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