Samsung smartwatch with mobile payment will launch later this year: Report

Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to offer a mobile payments function in a smartwatch to be launched in the second half of the year, South Korea’s Electronic Times newspaper reported on Monday citing unnamed sources. Samsung would use near-field communication (NFC) technology to support mobile payments on the smartwatch, the report said. This is the same technology Apple Inc uses for the Apple Pay function supported by its smartwatches. The South Korean firm has said that its Samsung Pay mobile payments service, which supports NFC technology, will be available with “select partners” in July. The company did not immediately comment on the report. Earlier reports suggested Samsung was planning to discontinue its ‘Samsung Wallet’ service on June 30 to make way for the new Samsung Pay, which is scheduled to launch this year. Samsung informed its users that any tickets or reservations made by them through Wallet will be available after it shuts down, but everything else will be disabled post 30 June. Earlier this year, **Samsung Electronics Co Ltd bought U.S. mobile wallet startup LoopPay** , signalling its intention to launch a smartphone payments service to compete with a recent offering from rival Apple. Mobile payments have been slow to catch on in the United States and elsewhere, despite strong backing. Apple, Google, and eBay Inc’s PayPal have all launched services to allow users to pay in stores via smartphones. The weak uptake is partly because many retailers have been reluctant to adopt the hardware and software infrastructure required for these new mobile payment options to work. These services also fail to offer much more convenience than simply swiping a credit card, Samsung executives said. With inputs from Reuters