Samsung Pay may launch in India next year

Even as India struggles in the aftermath of invalidation of much of its cash and shows interest in mobile wallets, top Silicon Valley companies haven’t jumped in on the opportunity yet with their epayment solutions. One company however seems interested now.

Samsung is said to be working on launching Samsung Pay in India next year. The company is eyeing the first half of 2017 as the timeframe for the launch of its digital payment solution, according to SamMobile.

The South Korean conglomerate has begun testing the mobile payment service in the Indian market, according to the report. Depending on how the testing goes, there could be a delay in the launch of Samsung Pay in India.

Samsung Pay, which rivals Android Pay and Google Pay, requires NFC-equipped point-of-sale terminals. It's a hard sell as it would require Samsung to convince merchants across the country to upgrade their existing point-of-sale machines. Most of the point-of-sale devices in India don't support NFC.

These requirements could have been some of the reasons that have prevented Apple and Google to bring their own payment solutions to India.

Apple Pay has a similar requirement, which requires users to have an Apple Watch or an iPhone. For what it's worth, Apple CEO Tim Cook paid a visit to the headquarters of ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank, during his trip to India earlier this year. This obviously fuelled speculations of the impending launch of Apple Pay in India.

In the light of demonetisation, wallet apps such as Paytm and MobiKwik have reported astronomical growth in transactions and downloads. Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet service, announced earlier this month that its service is now being used to carry out more transactions than all the plastic cards combined.

Google and Apple didn’t respond to our request for comments when Mashable India reached out to them earlier this month.