Re/code reports this morning that Samsung is reportedly in talks with mobile payments startup LoopPay to develop a payments system to rival Apple Pay. The system would reportedly debut in 2015.
The combined Samsung and LoopPay system would allow customers to wave their Samsung phones at payment terminals instead of swiping credit cards or paying with cash or check. Samsung could leverage NFC in its phones and use that standard to wirelessly process payments.
LoopPay’s technology would make it possible for the service to use both old and new payment terminals. LoopPay mimics a card swipe by recording the payment information from a car’s magnetic strip, and then transmitting that information to a card reader. LoopPay does not require NFC or any other wireless atandard.
The Samsung system could mimic Apple Pay by offering random tokenization and fingerprint recognition technology via the Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone. The Galaxy S5 can currently be used with PayPal’s app to pay with a phone at stores that accept PayPal.
Apple Pay debuted in October, and has proven popular among iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users. It was reported in November that Apple Pay accounts for one percent of all transactions at the upscale Whole Foods grocery chain, and McDonald’s says Apple Pay makes up half of its “tap to pay” transactions. Drug store chain Walgreens says it has seen such transactions double since the debut of Apple Pay.
