Dive Brief:
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Samsung’s mobile service, Samsung Pay, has handled 1.5 million transactions, with “tens of thousands” users each day signing up for it in South Korea, Samsung Pay chief Injong Rhee announced Wednesday at a kickoff event for the 2016 Olympic Games at Visa's Global Headquarters in San Francisco.
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Such numbers are the first to be revealed by a company with a mobile payment system.
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Samsung Pay works with near-field communications (NFC) enabled point-of-sales systems as well as with older magnetic-card strip readers.
Dive Insight:
Because they’re so limited and because neither Apple nor Google have released hard numbers on their wallets, any real comparison of Samsung Pay with Apple Pay or Android Pay, whose mobile wallets can also house loyalty cards, isn't possible.
While Samsung Pay’s ability to be used with older magnetic-card readers is a unique option, that may have come too late, according to Mark Tack, CTO of mobile marketing solutions company Vibes.
“The ironic element here is with the EMV liability shift taking place next month, there’s a significant burden on retailers if they don’t have [new POS systems]," Tack told Retail Dive. “That selling point with the ability to be used with magnetic [readers] will be somewhat irrelevant really soon.”
It’s likely to be mobile wallets’ powerful marketing opportunities for retailers and the accompanying convenience for users that make Android Pay and Apple Pay the only real players in the game, he says.
“We view this as a two-horse race, with Apple the primary provider,” Tack says.
