Sources: Samsung paid around $250M for mobile payments technology company LoopPay
Jason Del Rey / Re/code :
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes out a deal arc that Re/code itself started: after reporting in December that Samsung was in talks with LoopPay to launch an Apple Pay rival, the company confirmed the purchase in February and now sources put the price at around $250M. The number matters because LoopPay's magnetic-stripe technology was the foundation for Samsung Pay, which went live in the US that September on the Galaxy S6 family and Note 5.
First-order effects
- Samsung now owns outright the payments stack behind its September US launch of Samsung Pay, removing licensing dependency from an acquisition it had already committed to publicly.
Second-order effects
- The confirmed price sets a comparable for payments-tech valuations as Samsung keeps buying capability rather than building it — the same pattern visible when filings later showed it paid about $215M for Viv Labs, the virtual assistant startup.
Third-order effects
- If device makers keep acquiring payments and AI layers directly, smartphone competition consolidates around whoever owns the full software stack, with Samsung extending Samsung Pay through partnerships like the later PayPal integration.
The trend: Samsung is assembling its answer to Apple's ecosystem through acquisitions — payments first with LoopPay, then voice with Viv Labs — rather than developing each layer in-house.