Samsung Pay announces new partnership ahead of Singapore launch
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Samsung Pay announced an additional bank partnership, with Citibank Singapore Limited, ahead of its anticipated Singapore launch later this quarter.
Credit card holders from Citi, which issues Visa, MasterCard, and Amex-branded products, will be able to join customers of other major Singaporean banks, including DBS/POSB, OCBC Bank, and Standard Chartered, in using the wallet.
In Singapore, Samsung Pay is compatible with the Galaxy Note 5 4G+, S6 edge+ 4G+, S7 edge 4G+, and the S7 edge+ 4G+.
The Citi partnership will further Samsung Pay's already wide reach, as 1.3 million Singaporean adults — 29% of the country’s smartphone market — have Samsung phones. Citi will give Samsung an additional subset of users to onboard onto Samsung Pay. For context, Apple Pay launched Visa and MasterCard support in Singapore last week, but did not partner with Citibank.
Early sign-up numbers and Singapore's developed contactless infrastructure could bode well for Samsung Pay in the country.
- Samsung also announced that “thousands” of select customers have already signed up for a Samsung Pay beta test in Singapore ahead of the platform’s official launch.
- Singapore’s developed contactless ecosystem makes it a valuable market for mobile wallets. A third of all Visa credit and debit transactions in the country are contactless, and over 30,000 retail locations already accept NFC-based payments. And Samsung Pay should have even wider acceptance, since users can pay at any terminal that takes magnetic stripe payment cards in addition to NFC-enabled locations. Familiarity with tapping to pay, combined with wide contactless acceptance, could make it easy for users to adopt and habitually use the service.
Mobile payments are becoming more popular, but they still face some high barriers, such as consumers' continued loyalty to traditional payment methods and fragmented acceptance among merchants. But as loyalty programs are integrated and more consumers rely on their mobile wallets for other features like in-app payments, adoption and usage will surge over the next few years.
Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on mobile payments that forecasts the growth of in-store mobile payments in the U.S., analyzes the performance of major mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, and addresses the barriers holding mobile payments back as well as the benefits that will propel adoption.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
- In our latest US in-store mobile payments forecast, we find that volume will reach $75 billion this year. We expect volume to pick up significantly by 2020, reaching $503 billion. This reflects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 80% between 2015 and 2020.
- Consumer interest is the primary barrier to mobile payments adoption. Surveys indicate that the issue is less the mobile wallet itself and more that people remain loyal to traditional payment methods and show little enthusiasm for picking up new habits.
- Integrated loyalty programs and other add-on features will be key to mobile wallets taking off. Consumers are showing interest in wallets with integrated loyalty programs. Other potential add-ons, like in-app, in-browser, and P2P payments, will also start fueling adoption. This strategy has been proved successful in China with platforms like WeChat and Alipay.
In full, the report:
- Forecasts the growth of US in-store mobile payments volume and users through 2020.
- Measures mobile wallet user engagement by forecasting mobile payments' share of their annual retail spending.
- Reviews the performance of major mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.
- Addresses the key barriers that are preventing mobile in-store payments from taking off.
- Identifies the growth drivers that will ultimately carve a path for mainstream adoption.
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