Samsung to rival Apple and Google in mobile payment with LoopPay

Samsung is looking to enter the mobile wallet race to rival Apple Pay and Google Wallet with its purchase of LoopPay.

Samsung has purchased the mobile wallet company, LoopPay, in what appears to be a move that will see the South Korean tech company take on Apple and Google in the digital wallet arena. The value of the deal has yet to be announced, but Samsung did hail the purchase as a move that will “accelerate the next wave of innovation in the digital smart wallet”.

“Our goal has always been to build the smartest, most secure, user-friendly mobile wallet experience,” said JK Shin, president and head of IT and mobile division at Samsung Electronics.

It’s a bold move that already has the jump on the digital wallets of Apple and Google, as LoopPay’s technology has the potential to work in approximately 90 per cent of existing point-of-sale terminals.

The technology to facilitate this is LoopPay’s patented Magnetic Secure Transmission solution, which is an advanced and widely accepted contactless payment technology that can be accessed by the magnetic reader that is already found on most retail card machines.

“The infrastructure laid out over the last four decades is like the railroad tracks that took decades to lay. We’re building one existing rails, and it reaches its destination now,” said Will Graylin, chief executive of LoopPay.

As well as working on existing infrastructure, LoopPay can use the same terminals that Apple Pay requires and tokenise credit card transactions. But another and potentially huge advantage that LoopPay has over Apply Pay is that users can include loyalty cards, gift cards and other types of cards in the system, which Apple Pay has lacked so far.

This technology has the potential to be fast-tracked, not only because it builds upon existing infrastructure, but also because it’s now being championed by a worldwide brand. Samsung is hoping to use its global presence and distribution capabilities to help make the technology the most widely used payments solution. However, we don’t anticipate Apple or Google to give up without a fight.