Tag: samsung mobile

The Korean electronics company sees its wallet app as a way to sell its devices, not fee-based revenue generation.

Samsung mobile payments are taking on rivals in the United States by using a different approach from what already exists. The company explained its goal to use the wallet app to sell smartphones over collecting fees.

This is a drastically different perspective on mobile wallets when compared to top rival, Apple.

Apple uses its mobile wallet as a part of its overall ecosystem. That said, Apple Pay, like other smartphone payment apps, is struggling for widespread and mainstream adoption. Meanwhile, its top competition, Samsung mobile payments, is going in a new direction. Samsung Pay is a strategy to encourage consumers to buy the company’s devices.

As such, this move breaks away from the typical mobile wallet model. Usually, mobile payments generate revenue through fees paid by financial partners and/or merchants. In Samsung’s case, it is an added selling feature for smartphones, tablets and other gear.

Samsung mobile payments will not be collecting usage fees from its financial partners.

Conversely, Apple Pay is a mobile wallet that mainly generates income by requiring its partner banks and financial institutions to pay a small charge for every completed transaction. The actual figure has not been publicly released. Equally, some reports have indicated that in the United States, it is a fee of 0.15 percent of the transaction.

On the flip side, Samsung Pay does not require its financial partners to pay a fee for its use. Instead, the electronics company aims to make it appealing to consumers, merchants and banks. That way, it will become widely available for use and will be a selling feature for its devices. This strategy uses the mobile wallet as a sales feature, not a revenue generator unto itself.

According to Samsung Pay global vice president, Elle Kim, “We’re a hardware company, and at the end of the day I think what we’re trying to do is get people who hold (one of) our phones and use it…to just love it more.” It will be interesting to see how the Samsung mobile payments strategy works against the competition.

For the first time in 6 years, the consumer electronics giant has made a change in this critical position.

While Samsung has not at all seen a stoppage in its mobile tech sales, and while it continues to be one of the top smartphone manufacturers worldwide, the company has been facing some sizeable pressures on its business, particularly from competition such as Huawei and Xiaomi.

As a result, the company has changed its mobile communications president as it develops a new strategy.

This is the first time in six years that the company has changed the head of its mobile tech. This means that JK Shin, a 59 year old who has been holding that position for over half a decade, will be on his way out. He is being replaced by Dongjin Koh, who is 54 and was previously the head of mobile Research and Development for the company. He was the one at the wheel when Samsung developed Tizen, its own mobile operating system. He was also leading the way with the Samsung Pay mobile payments platform for which the company has high hopes.

This change in mobile tech leadership doesn’t mean that Shin will be stepping completely out of the company.

Instead, this is being considered as a shuffle within the company instead of one leader stepping up while another leaves altogether. Shin is exceptionally experienced as an executive within this market. He is behind the rise of Samsung’s smartphone business and at the same time, he is also the one who was in command as the more recent challenges fell into place.

For Shin, this will mean that he will be stepping out of the day-to-day mobile technology operations of the company. He will be focusing his attention on tasks of a more long-term planning nature. His goal will be to come up with a strategy that will allow the company to rebuild and rejuvenate its mobile business, which has been struggling to see the type of growth that it has experienced in the past.

It is also important to point out that mobile tech leadership wasn’t Shin’s only role in the company. He was, and remains, the co-CEO of Samsung Electronics. Clearly, this move is not being made to remove him from the company, but rather to freshen its perspective.