Move over, Apple Pay. Featuring technology from Finovate Best of Show winner LoopPay, Samsung’s Samsung Pay mobile payment service is on its way. We spotted founder Will Grayling on the CBS Evening News last night demoing the technology at a Manhattan retailer.
Samsung’s decision to acquire LoopPay in February for $250 million clearly signifies that Samsung is stepping up to the challenge of Apple’s mobile payment technology, Apple Pay. Samsung has since announced its unique take on mobile payments will launch in South Korea on 20 August and in the United States on 28 September. Next up: Launches in Spain and China.
Samsung Pay will be preloaded on Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5. The technology will be available for free download on Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
CEO Will Graylin demonstrated LoopPay’s mobile payment technology at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose.
LoopPay’s magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology enables mobile devices to communicate with the mag-stripe readers of point-of-sale payment terminals. By placing the mobile device near the reader, consumers can pay for purchases with a variety of stored credit and debit cards (although LoopPay is quick to point out that due to tokenization, no credit or debit information is stored on the device or actually transmitted during the transaction).
Authentication comes courtesy of either fingerprint, or pass-code. MST technology—being compatible with much of the existing POS technology—differentiates it from Apple Pay which relies solely on near field communication (NFC) to transmit information; Samsung Pay uses both NFC and MST.
Read more about the differences between Apple Pay and Samsung Pay (with Android Pay thrown in for good measure) here.
Talking about his company’s acquisition by Samsung shortly after the announcement, LoopPay CEO Will Graylin pointed out that Apple Pay wasn’t in mind when his company and Samsung began working together.
“A lot of the focus was really ‘How do we solve a bigger problem, which is consumer adoption,'” Graylin said in an interview with USA Today. “Consumers are not going to adopt if they can’t use a vast majority of their cards at a vast majority of merchants.”
LoopPay was founded in August 2013 and, post-acquisition, remains headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2014 for its demonstration of Loop and LoopWallet.