MasterCard and Samsung Electronics announced they are extending their global partnership leveraging the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) to deliver Samsung Pay in Europe.  Samsung Pay is a mobile payment service that will enable consumers to use their Samsung flagship mobile devices to make every day in-store purchases at contactless and mag stripe terminals leveraging NFC and MST technologies. Samsung and MasterCard will together roll out Samsung Pay throughout Europe. Card issuers will be able to connect to the MDES platform and activate the Samsung Pay service upon launch. Cardholders from participating issuers can activate their credit, debit, reloadable prepaid and small business cards in the Samsung Pay service and use their mobile devices to make everyday purchases.

Earlier this year, MasterCard announced it would provide the tokenization services to Samsung Pay for its secure transactions, enabling a quick scaling connection to bank partners in the U.S. Samsung Pay is a global mobile payment solution that is the first mobile wallet to give consumers a way to shop and spend virtually anywhere – using contactless and magstripe card readers.

“Samsung Pay is pleased to join forces with MasterCard to offer a simple and safe mobile payment experience enabled for wider merchant acceptance to MasterCard cardholders and issuers in Europe,” said Injong Rhee, EVP of Samsung Electronics, Global Head of Samsung Pay. “Both organizations are committed to ground breaking fin-tech innovations that will deliver on the promise of a true mobile wallet.”

“With the continued global growth and reliance on connected mobile devices, we are delighted to expand our relationship with Samsung by extending the reach of Samsung Pay and MDES to cardholders in Europe.  Europeans have been leading the way in the adoption of new ways to shop, buy and make a payment. Through our strong partnership with Samsung we look forward to continuing to drive innovation in mobile commerce by creating simple and secure digital payment experiences for consumers,”  said Javier Perez, President of MasterCard Europe.

Samsung Pay is scheduled to launch in the U.S. and South Korea later this summer and Samsung is currently working with banks and partners to bring the payment service to Europe.

Since the announcement of MDES in 2013, millions of MasterCard accounts have been tokenized for use in popular digital wallet services. MDES currently provides tokenization services for credit, debit, co-brand, prepaid and small business cards. Private label tokenization, announced last month, will begin in the third quarter of this year. Tokenization services for app, eCommerce, and recurring billing card-on-file programs will be available to U.S. and Canadian merchants later this year and expand globally across all MDES-enabled markets. 

About MasterCard
MasterCard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com, is a technology company in the global payments industry. We operate the world’s fastest payments processing network, connecting consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. MasterCard’s products and solutions make everyday commerce activities – such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances – easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone. Follow us on Twitter @MasterCardNews, join the discussion on the Beyond the Transaction Blog and subscribe for the latest news on the Engagement Bureau.

“We have established ourselves as an innovator in the commercial LTE market and now seek to expand our strong LTE offerings into public safety,” said Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Pushing the boundaries of telecommunication technology to bring about improvements to the quality of life and the social well-being of people around the world has always been an important goal for Samsung. Our Public Safety solution will enable vastly improved coordination for first responders, improving emergency situations.”

Samsung’s offerings include a Push-To-Talk (PTT) service and PTT client application for devices, evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), IMS, EPC and eNB. Each of these components is based on the 3GPP Release 12 standard—a first for a solution of its kind, with existing solutions typically being proprietary in nature.

Samsung’s comprehensive PS-LTE solution places primary emphasis on stability and built-in redundancies to ensure the maximum performance and reliability necessary to exceed expectations in tense and time-critical situations.

As an extended component of its PS-LTE solution, Samsung is also developing a dedicated railway and subway security and operations solution, Railway LTE. Based on the same platform as the PS-LTE solution, Railway LTE will enable operators, transport infrastructure firms and governments the ability to greatly improve their ability to cost-effectively and directly maintain safe operation and coordination of rail traffic.

Samsung is currently under discussion to deploy its PS-LTE solution, which will be commercially available in Q3 2015.

As the leading contributor to the 3GPP PS-LTE, Samsung supported the standardization of device-to-device (D2D) and Group Communication System Enabler for LTE (GCSELTE) specifications in Release 12. These efforts received additional and considerable support from the Korean government, the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) and major operators within Korea.

With the Release 13 specification, Samsung aims to further cement its leadership with Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) and Isolated E-UTRAN Operation for Public Safety(IOPS) standardization.

The Korean government plans to launch the initial PS-LTE network in Gangwon province in 4Q 2015 and will expand to additional major cities by 2016 in order to support the operations of more than 320 government departments and agencies.