Samsung Pay is the Best Payment Service According to Russia’s ‘Banking Review’

Samsung Electronics announces that Samsung Pay mobile payment service received the “Financial Sphere” award (section “Banks and Payment services”), established by Russian leading banking media ‘Banking Review’ (“Bankovskoe obozrenie”), in the “Payment service” category. The sixth “Financial sphere” Award Ceremony was held on March 30th 2017 in Moscow. Samsung Electronics representatives attended the event. Seif El Hakim, Head of Mobile Marketing in Russia, received the award from the organizers.

“On behalf of Samsung Electronics, I thank everyone who voted for Samsung Pay. From the very first day, we in Samsung believed in future success of the Samsung Pay on the Russian market. Our partners and their professionalism and support played an important role in launching the project in the shortest possible time, – said Seif El Hakim, Head of Mobile Marketing in Russia. – We won’t stop at this and plan to expand the Samsung Pay network to connect every bank in Russia to Samsung’s service”.

The “Financial sphere” award in the “Payment service” category recognizes banks and companies without a banking license, that have announced and released a financial product that achieved significant results in the market within a year or more. Recipients of the award are determined by the expert council. The members of the council evaluate each of the nominees on a five-point scale, where 1 is the lowest score and 5 is the highest one. The applicant who receives the highest score becomes the winner.

‘Banking Review’ experts highly appreciated the achievements of Samsung Pay in the Russian market. Safe and convenient, the payment service was introduced in the country on September 29^th 2016. Today Samsung Pay is accepted for payment almost everywhere, where it is possible to proceed a payment via a bank card that uses a contactless technology or a magnetic strip. The service is available for holders of cards issued by the following banks and financial organizations: Alfa-Bank, BINBANK, VTB24, MTS and MTS Bank, Bank Otkrytie, Raiffeisenbank, Roketbank, Russian Standard Bank, Sberbank, Tinkoff Bank, Tochka and Yandex.Money. Samsung Pay operates in Russia with Mastercard cards issued by all listed banks, as well as with Visa cards of Alfa-Bank, VTB24, MTS Bank, Raiffeisenbank and Tinkoff. Another competitive advantage of the service as it was recognized by the ‘Banking Review’ is its three-stage security system.

The “Financial sphere” award for financial innovations was established by leading Russian banking media ‘Banking Review’ (“Bankovskoe obozrenie”) in 2012. Until 2016 it was mostly given to banks and was called “Banking Sphere”. Today, the award recognizes banking and financial products, solutions and methods of their implementation in order to find bright innovative and progressive approaches to a standard set of financial instruments and to attract the attention of the professional community.