Samsung Pay’s Gift Card Platform Expands To 50 Merchants

Samsung Pay has found a niche in the mobile payments space that could help it get a bit more popular with merchants and consumers. It’s doing so by getting deeper into the gift card space.

Samsung announced yesterday (Dec. 10) that Samsung Pay now supports 50 merchant gift cards. Beyond that, Samsung Pay enables consumers to buy and share those gift cards through the app itself. Some of these merchants include Babies“R”Us and Toys“R”Us, Bass Pro Shops, Domino’s, eBay, GameStop, Nike, Regal Entertainment Group and Staples. Samsung also said more gift card options will be added to Samsung Pay in the coming months.

“With the support of more than 50 major retail gift cards and the launch of the in-app gift card store, Samsung Pay is bringing consumers an easier way to use gift cards,” said Injong Rhee, EVP of Samsung Electronics and global head of Samsung Pay. “People love gift cards, but how many of us have gone to pay for something only to realize we have a gift card sitting around somewhere at home? With Samsung Pay, you can easily carry your gift cards with you everywhere you go and not have to worry about a card going unspent. Another feature that is unique to Samsung Pay is the ability to buy gift cards and gift them to friends within the Samsung Pay app itself. We hope this will provide greater flexibility, access and choice for Samsung Pay customers heading into the holiday season.”

In the crowded mobile payments space, Samsung Pay’s edge, of course, is its MST technology, which enables Samsung Pay acceptance at just about every terminal that today accepts any mag stripe or EMV card without merchants having to change anything at their points of sale to accept payments made using it.

The Samsung mobile payments technology traces its genesis to the acquisition of LoopPay. Samsung announced in Feb. 2015 that it had acquired LoopPay, a mobile commerce platform that uses its magnetic secure transmission (MST) patented technology to turn existing mag stripe readers into mobile contactless receivers. That makes LoopPay digital wallet users able to pay at more than 90 percent of merchant establishments today.