Kyle Brown, Samsung’s head of technology launch management, said: “Samsung Pay is one of our key foundations for our services strategy for 2017, along with Bixby, Samsung Connect and Samsung Health.” It will be crucial for Samsung to convince both new and existing Android Pay users to jump to Samsung Pay, as the firm struggles to break free from being seen as solely a device vendor. Even more of a challenge will be getting existing Android Pay users to start using Samsung Pay – it is hard to see why someone would want to switch at present.” Wood said: “Samsung Pay’s primary competition is Android Pay and Samsung will need to offer some very attractive incentives to users if it wants to compete. That means Samsung has a lot of ground to make up, according to Ben Wood, head of research for the analysts CCS Insight. Android Pay has been available on Samsung and other manufacturers’ Android smartphones since May 2016 in the UK, and has third-party app support with payments inside on-demand food delivery apps, for example. While Samsung Pay was one of the first mobile payment systems to market in South Korea and other countries, it is late to the game in the UK.

Tap to pay android