Samsung delays mobile payment service, expands it to China and Europe

Samsung Electronics announced on Wednesday it will be including China and Europe for the Samsung Pay service, Reuters reported. But the company's initial decision to launch Samsung Pay in South Korea and the United States has been put off till September.

The decision to delay the launch of its mobile-payment service will place it further afield from its top competitors Apple Inc and Google Inc.

Samsung had announced its new payment service in March while unveiling the new smartphones. The company had planned to launch Samsung Pay in South Korea and the United States around July.

Samsung will also launch the service in areas such as South America and Australia later this year, Samsung executive vice president Rhee Injong said.

Samsung's decision to delay the launch of Samsung Pay seems deliberate because it has set a September time frame for the launch of both Samsung Pay and its next flagship smartphone model.

Samsung Electronics wants to enter to growing mobile-payment market as it is expected to hit $142 billion by 2019.

This year the mobile payment service market touched $67 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Samsung is partnering with MasterCard Inc and Visa Inc on the new payment service. The technology used by Samsung will work with any magnetic stripe card readers. That should make it work in more places than Apple Pay or Android Pay, reported by the Verge.

To begin with, Samsung initially is targeting 15-20 percent of smartphone users with its mobile payment service.

In February, Samsung bought LoopPay Inc to help it develop technology for mobile payments.

In related news, Google Android Pay gets a new feature that can make any smartphone application into a wallet. With the new feature, shoppers can use it physically or online and in about 700,000 U.S. locations, Google has said.

Apple's smartphone market share saw a rise with the introduction of Apple Pay last year. While Samsung's smartphone share has declined.