Samsung Developing Debit Card for Mobile Payments Platform

“The card is being developed in collaboration with digital money management specialist SoFi, and will take the form of ‘an innovative debit card backed by a cash management accounts,’ Samsung explained.”

The mobile payments arms race continues, with Samsung having recently revealed that it is currently developing a payment card that will be associated with its Samsung Pay mobile payments platform.

Details at present are scant. In a statement, Samsung explained that it’s planning to expand its Samsung Pay platform from payments to money management, and framed the development of a payment card as an important first step. The card is being developed in collaboration with digital money management specialist SoFi, and will take the form of “an innovative debit card backed by a cash management accounts,” Samsung explained.

The card will be launched this summer, with Samsung promising further details “in the coming weeks.”

While that isn’t a lot of information to go on, it’s reasonable to understand this project as a response to the Apple Card launched last summer. Designed to primarily exist as a virtual card in the end user’s Apple Wallet – and secured with the iPhone’s biometric authentication technology – the Apple Wallet represented Apple’s first big step beyond the mobile payments enabled through its Apple Pay platform and into bona fide financial account services.

Reports emerged last month that Google was working on its own rival to the Apple Card, with Google Pay likewise having been in direct competition with Apple Pay. Now, it seems that Samsung, which has also been a competitor in the mobile money arena with its Samsung Pay platform, is also eager to keep pace.

For its part, Samsung made a name for itself in the mobile payments field with its Magnetic Transmission Technology, which allowed Samsung devices to conduct contactless transactions even with older, swipe-based Point of Sale terminals. Whether and how it can bring that kind of technological innovation to money management and virtual debit cards remains to be seen.