In what had already been in rumours for quite some time, Samsung today announced that it has acquired LoopPay, a company which manufactures an Apple Pay competitor tech, which works with most of the high-end, non-Apple devices.
The acquisition could see future Samsung flagships coming up with an Apple Pay like feature, however a possibility of such a feature in the upcoming Galaxy S6 is a 50-50 bet. However, it wouldn’t be wrong to speculate that Samsung’s recent Wireless tech teaser, is probably hinting towards a wireless payment system as well, apart from the wireless charging which media reports have been saying.
LoopPay currently offers a standalone fob or a CardCase, which helps in keeping the payment tech into a protective casing. This tech is not only compatible with some of the high-end flagships out there, it also works fine with the current payment mechanism in place at shops and retailers.
With a LoopPay app, you input and then store your credit card information into the app. The case takes that info and communicates wirelessly with existing tap-to-pay terminals available at merchants and retailers. This is pretty much similar to how your magnetic stripe works with payment terminals, thus requiring no hardware update on stores.
LoopPay founders Will Grayling and George Wallner will join Samsung’s Mobile Division and LoopPay’s entire tech and team would be integrated into Samsung so as to help the Korean giant fulfil its mobile wallet plans.
Samsung’s mobile wallet ambitions surfaced in December last year when reports claimed that Samsung was looking to develop an Apple Pay competitor. However, it was more of a partnership, and acquisition talks were still nothing more than rumours.
Those reports even talked about Samsung launching the Apple Pay competitior along with the next generation Galaxy S device in CES 2015. However, none of that materialised. We’ll probably have to wait till MWC to see as to what Samsung has in store for us.
