Rumor Mill: Samsung Pay To Add P2P Payments

Samsung may use its Samsung Pay mobile payments service to launch the next generation of P2P payments.

Phone-to-phone payments, that is.

A Business Korea article recently reported that the company is working on implementing a technology that enables payments to be exchanged between smartphones using NFC chips. Because Samsung Pay uses NCF and magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology to enable its payment transfers, having the ability to pay a person via the devices seems to be the next logical step.

While mobile payment apps such as Samsung Pay have been traditionally thought of for making payments in-app, online and in store, the next wave of Samsung Pay technology may provide its users and potential users with another value add to their mobile payments option.

According to the Business Korea article, Hankook NFC, a mobile payment startup, has applied for a patent to enable technology to work with Samsung Pay and NFC. That partnership would possibly be used to develop the technology that allows consumers to use Samsung Pay to transfer money between devices.

“If Samsung Electronics expands the application of the NFC payment module, smartphones with Samsung Pay can be used as mobile payment devices. Accordingly, it is possible to not only transfer money between smartphones but also pay with credit cards,” said an unnamed source from a FinTech company.

For Samsung Pay, what sets it apart in the crowded mobile payments space is its MST technology, which enables Samsung Pay acceptance at just about every terminal that today accepts any mag stripe or EMV card without merchants having to change anything at their points of sale to accept payments made using it.

Samsung Pay works on Galaxy S6, S6 edge, Note5 and S6 edge+ devices operating on the AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular networks in the United States.

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