Apple Pay's Entry Imminent
Apple Pay is about to enter the South Korean market, and the possibility is increasing that Samsung Electronics may turn Samsung Pay into a paid service.
The financial authorities recently said that Apple Pay fees of 0.1 percent to 0.15 percent can be imposed on not only consumers and stores but credit card companies, and it is said that both Apple and Samsung Electronics will impose payment fees on them and many other payment service providers, including Naver Pay and Kakao Pay, will follow suit as a new profit model.
Samsung Electronics is yet to make a comment on the matter. Samsung Pay is currently the largest digital card payment service in South Korea, where it was launched in August 2015, the number of users is more than 16 million, and the cumulative payment is 182 trillion won or so.
The NFC technology of Apple Pay is based on the EMV Contactless of Europay, MasterCard, and Visa. Every South Korean credit card company to provide the Apply Pay service is required to pay both the EMV fee (1 percent) and the Apple Pay fee. Samsung Pay supports both magnetic secure transmission and NFC and it has been free of charge since its launch except for the service initiation fee.
“Samsung Electronics has run the free service in order to increase and retain Galaxy smartphone users, but Apple Pay is changing the market and Samsung Electronics may consider charging,” said an industry source.