Samsung Pay, Samsung's mobile payment service, is going to become a lot more useful to U.S users in the new year.
A report from Reuters says Samsung will expand Samsung Pay with online payment support, putting it in direct competition with the likes of PayPal and Visa Checkout.
Letting users pay for online purchases using Samsung Pay would also give Samsung's service an edge over Apple Pay, which lets users pay for things within apps, but not directly online.
Thomas Ko, Samsung Pay's global co-general manager, told Reuters, "wider handset availability of Samsung Pay as well as online payment support is coming soon."
At the moment, Samsung Pay is only supported by a few of Samsung's flagship smartphones, such as the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 5. If Samsung ever hopes to see Samsung Pay take off and become widely adopted, it needs to bring the feature to not only its high-end smartphones, but also its low-end and mid-range lineups.
Since its launch in on Sept. 28 in the U.S., an average of eight transactions per user were made within the first month, according to Samsung.
Samsung Pay differs from Apple Pay and Android Pay in that it works with existing mobile payment and credit card terminals. Whereas Apple Pay requires businesses to install new NFC-enabled terminals, Samsung Pay-compatible smartphones are automatically detected as if they are credit cards when they're held near a magnetic terminal.
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