Samsung Pay will soon offer an international remittance feature. This will be possible through a Finablr-owned platform. For those that are not aware, Finablr is a Ripple partner and is London-listed.
Samsung Pay brands this new service as Money Transfer. It is just available in the US, except for Oklahoma. In the following months, the service is expected to be rolled out in other countries.
Finablr made the announcement on October 3, declaring that this partnership with Samsung involves the creation of a brand-new in-app feature capable of remitting funds to numerous foreign recipients. A transfer can be initiated with debit or credit cards that are registered in Samsung Pay. Money is then sent as cash to the recipients. Bank account transfer is also possible.
All transactions are going to be transparent. Rates and fees are disclosed when exchange happens. However, we do not know what pricing options are now available. Samsung Knox is going to store keys used for tokenized credentials.
With the partnership, money transfers can go towards 47 countries, including Canada, China, Australia, Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. Only Samsung devices can be used.
Samsung Electronics America VP, Sang w. Ahn, said:
“Money Transfer is a first step in our vision to evolve Samsung Pay into a platform that makes users’ financial lives more convenient.”
The Actual Payments
Travelex will handle the actual payments. This is a British company that was just acquired by Finablr.
We do not know if Travelex will use Ripple for the Samsung Pay transactions. Traditional SWIFT will surely be utilized for many transactions. At the same time, you cannot use this service in order to sell or buy cryptocurrency.
Samsung is clearly working really hard to develop blockchain technology that will be used on branded devices. The Galaxy Note 10 has an included cryptocurrency wallet and Bitcoin support was added to Samsung phones. It is even possible that Samsung will develop a proprietary digital coin and a blockchain network but this was not confirmed.