Samsung to Preinstall Samsung Pay In New Smartphones

Samsung Electronics said earlier this week it will preinstall Samsung Pay in its upcoming smartphones slated to be released next year.

According to a report, Samsung Electronics confirmed the plan to preinstall its mobile payment service in its upcoming smartphones, excluding some of the models that are on the lower end of the market. The report noted that Samsung Pay debuted with the launch of the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus in Aug. 2015. Today, Samsung Pay is available in seven countries — the U.S., Spain, Brazil, Singapore, Australia and China, as well as South Korea. It will be also launched in Russia, Thailand and Malaysia by the end of 2016, noted the report.

In addition to preinstalling Samsung Pay, the report noted the electronics company is gearing up to roll out Samsung Pay Mini, which is an application that enables consumers to use its payment service through non-Samsung smartphones. Samsung Pay Mini is going after the online payment market, noted the report.

Although Samsung Pay Mini is coming next year, there are ways to use Samsung Pay on non-Samsung devices already. According to a recent report by 9to5Google, Samsung Pay confirmed on Twitter that the Gear S3 Classic and the Gear S3 Frontier will work with or without a Samsung smartphone. The devices can be paired with any Android smartphone that has KitKat or newer, and Samsung Pay will work. The report noted Samsung doesn’t provide clarity in terms of how it works, but the report speculated that Samsung could roll out Samsung Pay for other handsets that run Android, or it could be integrated into the Gear Manager app to power Samsung Pay. In late August, as Apple geared up to roll out the Apple Watch Series 2, Samsung was drawing its own line in the sand, getting ready to take on the competitors in the wearable device market. Samsung was following up on what Mashable said was the tech giant’s “well-received” Gear S2 with the Gear S3, which is defined in part by size.