Goodbye Samsung Wallet, Hello Samsung Pay

The news of a company shutting down one of its services usually isn’t good news, but for Samsung, the news of its Samsung Wallet shutting down means the company is prepping for the bigger (and potentially better) mobile wallet option — Samsung Pay.

The news that Samsung Wallet will be shutting down June 30, as reported by the Sam Mobile news site, came to users of the wallet via a message from Samsung. The company didn’t say why it was shutting down the service, but with the impending launch of Samsung Pay, it’s obvious what’s coming next: the new, and improved Samsung mobile payments option that’s going to compete against Apple Pay in the battle for mobile payments.

While there hasn’t officially been a launch date set for Samsung Pay, JinYoung Park, VP of Samsung’s mobile communications business, gave some insight into why Samsung Pay will be a big move for the company and when exactly it will be launched — though the specific date hasn’t been announced.

“We are expecting the overall mobile payments market to rapidly grow, and in response to this anticipation of fast growth we have been preparing the Samsung Pay service,” Park said. “As you know, one of the advantages of Samsung Pay is that it can also be used on a magnetic strip [POS device], which means that it will provide very high accessibility in the existing credit-card merchant base to the consumers, so this high accessibility is a very high advantage to Samsung Pay. Also, in terms of security, we have prepared a triple security approach, where we use not only a credit card’s encryption but also fingerprint and the Knox system to provide a very secure and safe platform.”

He added: “In terms of our plans, we are planning to launch Samsung Pay in Korea and in the U.S. during the second half of this year. We are currently considering the rollout to other countries going forward.”