This mobile wallet has now made its way Down Under and aims to replace cash and train tickets.
In the competitive world of mobile payments, the Samsung Pay app has now launched in a new market. Australians have another mobile wallet choice in this area where there are many rivals but where adoption is scarce.
Mobile wallet apps have not been taking off at the rate expected by many of the companies behind them.
The Samsung Pay app was launched as a result of a partnership with both Citibank and American Express. The goal is to be the first contactless mobile payments platform to truly take off in the country.
Australians who use Samsung smartphones can pay at contactless terminals through those mobile devices. They simply need to download the mobile wallet and connect it with an American Express or Citibank card. That said, they cannot use Citibank and Amex branded cards from other banks with this mobile application.
The Samsung Pay app lets consumers complete payment transactions through tap and pay terminals.
This has made Australia the fifth market to be able to use Samsung Pay. Before Australia, the countries using this mobile app have been: Korea, the United States, China and Spain. That said, Singapore followed closely on its heels, having launched only days later.
Samsung Pay will function on any Galaxy smartphone, provided it has at least Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher. Its interface is designed to be simple and straightforward with a swipe to pay format. Samsung claims this makes it just as easy to pay with a smartphone as it is with a card. In fact, the company said it might be even easier for some.
The Korean consumer electronics company also identified four secure steps that are taken to complete every Samsung Pay app transaction:
• Open payments by swiping up from the home screen
• Select the desired card
• Place your finger on the home button so you can verify your fingerprint
• Tap the smartphone against a contactless terminal
The mobile payments system uses tokenization to make certain that card details remain private. They are never shared with the merchant.
Denny |
September 30, 2014
These products will be available exclusively to customers who will access them over their smartphones and tablets.
As much as online bill paying and digital transaction processing have become exceptionally commonplace, mobile banking has been experiencing a relatively slow adoption, comparatively speaking.
Some tenants are now capable of paying their rents electronically to skip paper checks, but smartphones aren’t there yet.
That said, as companies behind mobile payments work very hard to encourage consumers to use their smartphones instead of credit or debit card, a rising number of options are becoming available. Many are hopeful that the recent release of Apple Pay, along with the NFC enabled iPhone 6 will help to convince consumers to use this type of technology. At the same time, Citibank is looking at a mobile banking option that provides an account that is exclusive to smartphones and tablets.
The mobile banking account is called Access and Citibank has made it exclusively for these device users.
The primary market for the Access accounts are the Millennial generation, which typically down even own a checkbook and that are very used to paying their bills and making purchases online. This generation is also very comfortable with completing a large range of different tasks through the use of their smartphones and tablets.
Millennials are actually the biggest age-based demographic that are compete non-users of paper checks. Overall, though, 32 percent of consumers still use a paper check to pay at least one bill, whereas slightly more – 38 percent – pay at least one bill electronically.
As a whole, 12 percent of all Americans have said that they do not use their checkbook – regardless of whether or not they ever had one. Many of those who do still use checks use them for only one or two bills every month. Among the most common uses for this type of transaction is to pay rent.
Citibank is now seeking to move this type of transaction in a new direction with mobile banking and is aiming this product at the demographic that is most likely to be open to adopting it. According to the Citi U.S. chief operating officer of retail banking, Robert Beck, “We developed Access after spending a lot of time listening to customers and looking at their banking needs, and we identified several trends.”
