Samsung Pay demonstration in New York in August 2015
Photo: AP / dpa
Samsung is entering the booming business with contactless payment in Germany.
The service called Samsung Pay will start in this country on October 28th, announced the South Korean company on Thursday.
Samsung does not cooperate with several banks like Apple or Google, but processes all payments via virtual Visa debit cards from Solarisbank.
The amounts are then debited from the customer's bank accounts by Solarisbank.
The new service can be linked to almost any German bank account, said Samsung manager Thorsten Böker.
Samsung is primarily competing against Google Pay with its own payment service, as the US company's payment service is also available on Samsung smartphones.
The larger smartphone payment service, Apple Pay, on the other hand, only runs on Apple devices.
Google cooperates with some banks in Germany, but also offers PayPal as a billing method, so that virtually all bank customers in Germany can use the service.
With Samsung Pay, Solarisbank takes over this function.
In order to connect Samsung Pay with a personal bank account, Solarisbank uses a new and simple customer identification method that does not require video identification or a branch visit, it said.
The actual payment process is then similar to that of Google or Apple.
Many have already tried paying by mobile phone
Samsung and Solarisbank are also introducing Samsung Pay, an installment payment service called "Splitpay".
For payment amounts of 100 euros or more, customers could have these financed in installments with terms between three and 24 months, said Krishna Chandran, Managing Director Lending at Solarisbank AG.
According to an Innofact survey carried out on behalf of Verivox, four out of ten respondents (39 percent) from Germany already paid with their smartphones last summer.
For the vast majority of consumers, however, the smartphone is not yet an everyday means of payment: Only 13 percent of those surveyed would pay for a € 20 purchase in the supermarket with their smartphone (Apple Pay, Google Pay, retailer apps).
41 percent said they paid with an EC card, 36 percent in cash, i.e. with bills and coins.
9 percent paid with a credit card.
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mak / dpa