Samsung has made it official: Its mPayment platform, Samsung Pay, is now available on Verizon. Signs had already been appearing in the form of software updates for some Verizon customers over the last few days, but a lack of any official confirmation left consumers and analysts to speculate.
The major US telecom had been a notable omission from Samsung Pay’s roster of supporters when it launched in the US at the end of last month. And, as VentureBeat points out, “no real reason has been given for the delay” in getting the telecom on board.
It’s possible that it could have been related to security concerns, given the recent revelation of a potentially serious hack attack against LoopPay, the developer of Samsung Pay’s unique contactless payment technology, earlier this year; Samsung found out about the security breach in late August, when the platform was just launching in South Korea. But it’s not clear whether the company would have alerted American telecoms to this issue at the time, and it seems unlikely that other major carriers like AT&T and Sprint would sign on at the platforms launch while Verizon would abstain.
In any case, even with the security breach now out in the open, Verizon is evidently okay with officially affiliating itself with Samsung Pay, and that’s good news for Samsung as it seeks to compete against Android Pay and Apple Pay in the US market and beyond.
Source: VentureBeat
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