A representative shows how Samsung Pay works at the Mobile World Congress. (Photo : Reuters)
Apple and Samsung's rivalry continues as the latter breaks into China's trillion-dollar mobile payments market, just a few weeks after the California-based company had launched its own service. But aside from its biggest archenemy, Samsung faces a slew of other competitors that will make its foray into the e-wallet services a little problematic.
The South Korean company rolled out in China Samsung Pay, a mobile payments service that lets users purchase at a single tap. Samsung is working alongside China UnionPay, which also assisted Apple with its own local launch.
Samsung's move to enter China makes sense as the country has quickly adopted the technology. Citing data from the People's Bank of China, Engadget reported that Chinese consumers clocked in a staggering $2.8 trillion in mobile payments in Q3 2015, registering a 254-percent increase year-over-year.
In addition, China is considered as the biggest smartphone market today, with 620 million mobile Internet consumers, based on a Market Realist report. It also houses suppliers that produce NFC-compatible phones, a key requirement to facilitating mobile payments.
But while these figures are in favor of Samsung's entrance, the company appears to be late to the party.
In Sept. 2015, Huawei unveiled its own mobile payments service in China. This was boosted by its recent partnership with Alipay that aims to increase purchase security using fingerprint technology. Meanwhile, Tencent's WeChat is one of the early birds in the trend, registering about 400 million users as of late 2015. The presence of local players had many thinking if Samsung would be able to compete in an already packed market.
In an interview with the BBC, analysts said that the "mobile payment services provided by Alipay and WeChat were so dominant in China that international newcomers such as Apple and Samsung would face 'an uphill battle' to win market share."
According to a press release, Samsung Pay is currently available on the Samsung Galaxy S7, the Galaxy S7 Edge, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5. Plans of adding midrange models to the list are said to be in the pipeline.
