Mobile Payment War

LoopPay can simulate a credit card on a credit card machine.
LoopPay can simulate a credit card on a credit card machine.

 

Competition in the global mobile payment market is heating up. Samsung Electronics and Apple are expanding their payment platforms based on their strengths in the manufacturing sector, while existing payment service providers, mobile messengers, and social networking channels are competing for a higher market share.

According to industry sources, Samsung Electronics is looking to sign a licensing contract with LoopPay, an American startup. The firm owns a patent for wireless card information transmission and magnetic secure transmission, or MST, which allows payment even at stores with no near field communication (NFC) terminal. The result of cooperation between Samsung and LoopPay is expected in the Galaxy S6, to make its debut soon.

Samsung Electronics’ partnership with LoopPay is to enhance its competitiveness in the mobile payment market by means of a technique more compatible than the Touch ID and NFC-based Apple Pay, which was unveiled in September this year.

Apple, in the meantime, is planning to incorporate the simple payment technique into the Apple Watch slated to be released early next year. Google, on its part, recently updated its Google Wallet to add the Split Charge function. The idea is to make payments more convenient and win back customers who are looking forward to Apple Pay.

On the other hand, PayPal is penetrating more and more overseas markets to not lose its customers, and Alibaba recently opened its sixth Alipay branch office in Australia. Both of them are going to enter the Korean market in the near future as well. Social network service providers and mobile messengers are taking advantage of their connectivity. Facebook is working on a remittance service based on Facebook messenger, and Twitter is planning to provide a pilot service for account number-free remittance in France in partnership with the BPCE Group.

TenCent is striving to expand its Tenpay service by making use of the 600-million-subscriber mobile messenger WeChat, too. In Korea, Daum Kakao launched Kakao Pay and Bank Wallet Kakao to dominate the domestic market, and Naver released the Line Pay service on Dec. 16 to cover countries all around the world, except for Korea and China.

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