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Samsung is trying to strengthen into mobile business from multiple sides. It plans to integrate a mobile payment service with its Smartphones to compete against 'Apple Pay'. In that mission, yesterday it acquired LoopPay, a mobile wallet company. LoopPay is reported to work at more retailers than Apple Pay.
Although LoopPay is a startup, its technology is promising to take it much farther than Apple Pay, provided it is integrated well with Samsung devices. LoopPay works with existing magnetic card readers and hence is well suited to work at all retailers that accept credit/debit cards. That makes it much widely accepted than Apple Pay!
Is LoopPay integrated with Galaxy S6? No idea, but looking at Samsung's plan to get into mobile payment system, there is high probability S6 will have LoopPay in it. Last December, Samsung was in talks to launch Apply Pay rival, read that story here.
Even though my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has had NFC technology for a few years now, there are maybe only 5% of all retailers setup to accept NFC payments. This LoopPay technology today requires an extra hardware piece connected to your cell phone, so this is yet another huge barrier to acceptance.
The technology looks interesting and useful. I'm a bit bummed to hear that only Samsung will have access to this technology. But this isn't a MUST-HAVE feature since:
1. It appears incompatible for the newer (more secure) EMV cards
2. Implies that consumers should/will *TRUST* Samsung. Just reading the recent articles about their Smart TVs makes me NOT want to trust Samsung even more.
3. More retailers will probably install NFC terminals in the future to attract costumers. Apple Pay acceptance is growing. I imagine Google Wallet will grow as well.
One more thought...how does Samsung make money off of this? I doubt many people will see this as a MUST-HAVE feature. Both Apple & Google take a cut of the transaction fee. But here...Samsung gets *NOTHING*!! LoopPay simply mimics an existing card. While convenient for the consumer, the bank collects ALL of the transaction fee. I'm 99.9% sure retailers will NOT be willing to pay Samsung a percentage of their profits for this consumer convenience.
Great points why Samsung is confused in this purchase of LoopPay. The only approach that makes sense is for Samsung to embed this technology into their phones, but that is also a losing approach to me.
The technology looks interesting and useful. I'm a bit bummed to hear that only Samsung will have access to this technology. But this isn't a MUST-HAVE feature since:
1. It appears incompatible for the newer (more secure) EMV cards
2. Implies that consumers should/will *TRUST* Samsung. Just reading the recent articles about their Smart TVs makes me NOT want to trust Samsung even more.
3. More retailers will probably install NFC terminals in the future to attract costumers. Apple Pay acceptance is growing. I imagine Google Wallet will grow as well.
One more thought...how does Samsung make money off of this? I doubt many people will see this as a MUST-HAVE feature. Both Apple & Google take a cut of the transaction fee. But here...Samsung gets *NOTHING*!! LoopPay simply mimics an existing card. While convenient for the consumer, the bank collects ALL of the transaction fee. I'm 99.9% sure retailers will NOT be willing to pay Samsung a percentage of their profits for this consumer convenience.
As you mentioned that the up coming EMV roll out will be a significant negative impact to LoopPay's approach. By October 1, 2015 the majority USA merchants will be required to use EMV capable card terminals otherwise they will hold the responsibility to cover frauds.
I read the LoopPay's EMV FAQ and I don't feel they have a EMV solution at all. Their major talking point is something like "Don't worry, you can still use LoopPay by asking merchants to accept LoopPay as an old traditional non-EMV card." To me. it's more like a dying solution.
True, After Samsung's TV privacy issue, they have to full proof that security issue to be successful. Although, Samsung downplayed this issue with their smart TV, it's something they need to work on sincerely in order to win the confidence of consumers
Even though my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has had NFC technology for a few years now, there are maybe only 5% of all retailers setup to accept NFC payments. This LoopPay technology today requires an extra hardware piece connected to your cell phone, so this is yet another huge barrier to acceptance.
It's true around the world, mobile payments have not picked up to the scale this technology has been hyped. However, looking at the pros, I guess it should pick up provided the security issue is addressed. One security incident happens and it can be announced around the world. It's such an issue that it can ruin all positives of a promising technology.
For hardware, I guess Samsung would be planning to offer it free with their smartphones
It's confirmed when Galaxy S6 was unveiled in Mobile World Congress that the device is equipped with mobile payment technology. S6 will have Samsung Pay to be rolled out in US and Samsung home South Korea later in summer.
For the past 2 years I've been using the NFC feature of my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phone along with the Google Pay app to make purchases at local area retailers, however only a handful have NFC adopted or even turned on, so it's been disappointing at how few vendors have this technology.
This new Samsung S6 phone has the new hardware to allow it to work wirelessly with the standard, magnetic stripe system, making it usable almost everywhere. Now that's compelling.
Exactly, as I had said in the beginning, that's the new technology from LoopPay accommodating existing magnetic-stripe payment machines. And ~90% establishments use magnetic-stripe, so that can provide ease in proliferating this technology with the ultimate beneficiary being Samsung through its S6. They are looking at this as a key differentiation against Apple Pay.
