Samsung Pay will launch in South Africa in Q1 of 2017.
The news comes by way of Samsung South Africa’s Integrated Mobility Director, Craig Fleischer, who made the announcement at a launch event for Samsung’s new Galaxy Note7 smartphone. As TechCentral reports, Fleischer asserted that Samsung is “quite far down the line talking to local banks,” but cautioned, “Unfortunately, these things take time.” Fleischer also said that Samsung is “working with all the banks, not just the traditional big five.”
The move indicates Samsung’s seriousness in pursuing global reach for its mobile payment service. Having launched in Korea last summer, it’s now available in Australia, China, Singapore, Spain, the US, and Brazil, where it launched last month. As Samsung Pay and other major mPayment platforms continue to spread, they may be attracting greater interest from financial services institutions that are now convinced they represent an important new payment technology; at the Note7 launch event in Johannesburg, Fleischer asserted that Samsung is “working with everybody that is willing to work with us in this space, and at the moment everyone wants to work with us.”
The Note7 could further raise Samsung Pay’s profile in the mass market, since its iris scanning technology can be used to authorize purchases on the platform.
Source: TechCentral
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