Samsung Pay will not be released this summer

Samsung has revealed that it will delay Samsung Pay, its payment service that’s meant to rival Apple Pay, until at least September. It will be released at the same time as the new flagship mobile device.

Executive vice president Rhee In Jong, has said in an investor call this week that the payment service will still be launched in the US and South Korea as planned, but several months after the original July date, and that it will coincide with the release of the next high-end smartphone.

It appeared everything was on track for a successful summer launch. The company’s extant payment service, Samsung Wallet, was going to be quickly brushed under the carpet on 30th June. It bought LoopPay, a mobile-payments technology start up, for a whopping $250m, and it partnered with Visa and MasterCard. It even went as far as making sure its service was going to be compatible with 90 per cent of the current magnetic card-reading technology.

With Apple, Google and PayPal all working fervently on capturing a hefty block of the mobile payments industry, there is plenty of choice for the consumer and now it looks like Samsung will be arriving quite late to the market full of powerful and ambitious rivals.

“The new service will likely be deployed on its next Galaxy Note device. The key is how fast Samsung will be able to expand the service to lower-end devices,” said Claire Kim, a Seoul-based analyst at Daishin Securities Co.

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