Samsung plans to let US users pay online with Samsung Pay, expand it to lower-priced smartphones soon
Samsung Pay plans to enable U.S. online shopping in 2016 — Samsung Electronics Co plans to expand its fledgling mobile payment service in the United States next year …
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung Pay reached the U.S. only months ago as a flagship-only service: it launched in September on the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and Note 5, worked solely on 2015 Galaxy flagships with no Verizon support, and arrived after a summer of rollout promises for Korea, China and Europe (announced in June). The plan to open U.S. online checkout in 2016 extends that in-store bet to e-commerce — a direction Samsung later formalized through MasterPass-based online purchases and location-based coupons.
First-order effects
- U.S. shoppers gain a way to check out at online merchants with Samsung Pay rather than re-entering card details, and owners of cheaper Galaxy models stop being excluded from the wallet entirely.
Second-order effects
- Card issuers already in the wallet — Bank of America, Citi, Amex and U.S. Bank — get transaction volume beyond point-of-sale terminals, while merchants face pressure to accept a second mobile wallet alongside Apple Pay.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds toward lower-priced devices and web checkout, Samsung's wallet becomes a platform layered across its handset range — a path it later pushed further with PayPal integration in Samsung Pay and the SoFi debit card partnership.
The trend: Mobile wallets are expanding from flagship-exclusive tap-to-pay into full financial platforms spanning web checkout, mid-tier hardware and eventually branded cards.