Samsung Follows Apple, Google With New Digital Wallet App
Samsung has merged its Pay and Pass apps into one virtual billfold, dubbed Samsung Wallet, which will allow eligible Galaxy owners to store digital identification, payment or loyalty cards, keys, and passwords on their phone.
Half Pay and half Pass (with a dash of SmartThings), Samsung Wallet holds everything from membership cards and virtual house keys to passcodes and cryptocurrency. Samsung also partnered with Korean Air to store boarding passes in the app; later this year, it will begin to support official documents, like a mobile driver's license or student ID.
The app is protected by Samsung Knox and supports fingerprint recognition and encryption. An isolated Secure Element section will also store "sensitive items" to guard against digital and physical hacking, Samsung says.
That includes the digital keys to unlock house and car doors. Currently, Samsung Wallet works with SmartThings smart locks(Opens in a new window) and select BMW, Genesis, and Hyundai models.
Galaxy users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US can open Samsung Pay or Samsung Pass from an eligible device (the feature requires a Pay-enabled phone running Android 9 or later) and follow the prompt to update and migrate to Samsung Wallet.
The move comes after Apple recently announced several updates for Apple Pay, including Tap to Pay on iPhone, and an Apple Pay Later option. It's also been adding support for driver's licenses into its Wallet app. At I/O last month, Google also tipped(Opens in a new window) Google Wallet, a digital wallet for Android and Wear OS devices.
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