Samsung Electronics, announced that Samsung Pay, the most accepted mobile payment service that works at the majority of merchants today, has reached a global milestone – about five million registered users processed over 500 million dollars in the first six months, showing a strong adoption rate in South Korea and the U.S.* This also demonstrates that users continue to increasingly use Samsung Pay in their everyday lives for its convenience, flexibility and security.

“Since its introduction last year, Samsung Pay has changed the way people pay and use their smartphones,” said Injong Rhee, EVP and Head of R&D, Software and Services of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. “We’ve already seen significant consumer adoption and we continue to see great momentum. Our aim is to expand Samsung Pay to even more locations around the world, and our customers should expect to see more features in the year to come.”

In 2016, Samsung Pay will start global expansion beginning with China in March, followed by Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain and the U.K. later in the year. Additionally, Canada will be added to the new launch roadmap. Samsung Pay is currently available on select Galaxy devices including S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, Note5 as well as premium and mid-range options such as the 2016 models of both Galaxy A5 and A7**.

Extensive Partnership Ecosystem

Samsung Pay started its service in South Korea and the U.S. last year, and now supports eligible credit and debit cards from more than 70 major and regional banks***.

In addition to mobile payments, Samsung is partnering with BC Card, Hana Card, KB Kookmin Card, Lotte Card, NH Nonghyup Card and Samsung Card to provide a quick and easy online payment service in South Korea. By adding this new service, consumers will be able to use the Samsung Pay Fingerprint Authentication to pay online.

In 2016, Samsung Pay will support four major payment networks, including American Express, China UnionPay, MasterCard, and Visa. Many of the countries’ major banks and partners include Abanca, American Express, Banco do Brasil, Banco Sabadell, Bradesco, Brasil Pre-Pagos, Caixa, CaixaBank, China Construction Bank, China Everbright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, China Minsheng Banking Corp, DBS, El Corte Inglés, HSBC, imaginBank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Itaú Unibanco, MBNA, Nationwide Building Society, Nu Bank, OCBC Bank, Ping An Bank, Porto Seguro, Santander, Standard Chartered Bank and Transport for London (TfL).

Samsung Pay: More Than a Payment

Samsung Pay, a safe and easy-to-use mobile payment service, can be used to make purchases nearly everywhere cards are accepted.

• SIMPLE: To make a payment on Samsung Pay, users can simply swipe up, scan their fingerprint and pay.
• SAFE: Samsung Pay uses three levels of security to enable secure payments – Fingerprint Authentication, tokenization and Samsung KNOX.
• ALMOST ANYWHERE**: Samsung Pay is compatible with the majority of existing and new terminals, allowing users to pay almost anywhere you can swipe or tap your card.

Furthermore, Samsung Pay will expand its enhanced services to more than just credit or debit cards. Users can add transit passes, coupons and membership cards, which will provide more convenient and flexible payment experiences in their everyday lives. **

The Galaxy Experience

Samsung Pay is an example of how Samsung continues to push the boundaries of hardware, software and services to create devices that are designed to improve how consumers connect, share, organize and get more out of life. The company is redefining what is possible, beyond the limits of today’s technology, by introducing a constellation of seamless mobile experiences that will orbit the most beautiful and powerful smartphones ever created.

*Samsung Pay launched in August 2015 in South Korea and in September 2015 in the U.S. market.
**Availability may vary by country and region.
***Visit www.samsung.com/pay for the list of partners that support Samsung Pay.

About Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service from Samsung Electronics, is simple, safe and available almost anywhere you can swipe or tap your card. Combining NFC with Samsung’s proprietary MST technologies, Samsung Pay provides consumers a way to pay almost anywhere you can swipe or tap a card at millions of merchant locations. Samsung continues to strategically expand its partnership ecosystem for Samsung Pay to provide greater flexibility, access, and choice for customers while enabling an easy and safe payment experience.

Mobile devices have massively impacted modern life, and the way we listen to music is no exception. Digital and streaming music services have gradually replaced CDs and other physical formats as the music lover’s preferred medium. And, though MP3 players were must-have items in the early 2000s, smartphones have now emerged as the main devices people use to listen to their favorite music, as well as stream videos and play games.

This shift goes beyond the added convenience offered by smartphones, but is also due to the need for higher quality audio. There is an increasing demand for Ultra High Quality Audio (UHQA) and the latest Samsung Galaxy devices are equipped to deliver optimization functions allowing users to enjoy immersive music.

These types of cultural changes are significant, because almost everyone listens to music. A study released by Nielsen’s Music in January revealed that 93 percent of the American population listens to music, and about 75 percent say they do so actively. According to another recent study, approximately 64 percent of smartphone users between the ages of 18 and 29 in the U.S. use their devices to listen to music or podcasts, and 75 percent use their phones to watch video content.

A Changing Philosophy

The advent of portable music devices was a significant milestone in music history because it meant listening to music was no longer confined to a particular place and time. Listening to music also became less of a communal activity and more of a personal one. This technological trend has moved towards a more personalized music experience.

Smartphones bring this freedom to a totally new level as music lovers can listen to music wherever and whenever they want and enjoy instant access to vast libraries of music – and videos – all at their fingertips. The ability to purchase, download and listen to an album with a few quick taps, queue your favorite music videos or live performances on YouTube and listen to streaming audio that learns what type of music you like through advanced algorithms means that there has never been a better time to be a music fan.

As a result, the pressure for smartphone manufacturers to up the ante on sound quality is high. In the same way users demand higher resolution displays that provide vivid, life-like color and picture quality, consumers want higher resolution audio on their mobile devices that provide more life-like audio. By offering an “Organic Sound” experience, users can close their eyes and more easily imagine that the singer they are listening to is actually performing there in the same room.

At the Forefront

Samsung has been at the forefront of sound quality technology for some time. We saw early potential in cell phones as music players and launched the SPH-M100, also called the UpRoar, in 2000. It was the world’s first mobile phone with a built-in MP3 player, and it earned global praise for this innovative feature. MP3s soon became a standard feature on mobile phones, and the rest, as they say, is history. Samsung also introduced SoundAlive audio software but the push for higher quality audio really began with the debut of the Galaxy series of smart devices.

The audio experience is a key consideration from the earliest planning stages of every Galaxy device. The Galaxy Note 3, for example, was the first mobile phone to support UHQA (192kHz and 24bit stereo). At this quality, the playback the user will hear will be close to what the musician and sound engineer heard when the recording was produced. In the last year, this has become the new standard for smartphones, even though music in this format is only beginning to be widely available. To truly take advantage of this audio quality, a high-end pair of headphones, earphones or speakers are also required. And, to perfectly optimize this playback, Adapt Sound technology was implemented in the Galaxy S4. This allows users to optimize and customize audio to their own specific acoustic listening characteristics.

Innovations in Sound

The Galaxy S6 is similarly equipped with extremely advanced technologies developed with music lovers in mind. In addition to SoundAlive and Adapt Sound, the Galaxy S6 also has the best quality codec-chip in the industry. Samsung has also included a high-quality, premium pair of bundle in-box earphones with each and every Galaxy S series edition. Most recently, Samsung added a bigger, more powerful micro speaker with an enhanced amplifier to the Galaxy S6 that provides even louder, clearer sound. However, to truly appreciate UHQA sound, audiophiles will want to choose Samsung’s Level On or Level Over headphones, which, along with the Galaxy S6, form a powerful duo in terms of audio performance.

But the best is yet to come. It is Samsung’s ongoing mission to relentlessly improve audio performance through design innovations that overcome the physical restrictions required to deliver the ultimate audio performance. Samsung will strive to emulate vacuum tube amplifier sound to bring an added feeling of warmth and familiarity that comes with analog music to next-generation Galaxy smartphones through finely tuned signal processing. Next generation Galaxy devices will make you believe you are truly at the live concert you’re listening to on your earphones, and will provide audio quality that sounds better than even before.

It is Samsung’s ultimate goal to provide high quality audio through smartphones that sound as natural and as true to the original source as possible; an organic sound that carries the emotional aspects of live music. Users will be pleased to find these upgraded sound capabilities with all of Samsung’s next generation Galaxy smartphones.

Since Samsung Electronics was founded in 1969, the company has been on the cutting edge of many of these breakthroughs. From the world’s first LTE phone to the world’s best touchscreen technology, Samsung has made great strides by focusing on what’s next in user experience, functionality and design.

Let’s take a trip back in time and discover which breakthroughs made the Galaxy S6 edge possible.

1. Nikola Tesla exhibits first use of wireless electricity in 1890.

Most scientists agree that Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla was the father of wireless power transmission. What does that mean for us? Well, it allowed Samsung to pioneer the wireless charging we use now with the Galaxy series. The Tesla coils he used transmitted power for short distances without using wires.

2. Alan Turing develops principles of the basic computer in 1936.

In the 15th century, Gottfried Leibniz refined the binary number system – the foundation for all digital computers. Leibniz believed machines in the future would use this system. Turns out he was right. Jumping centuries later, Alan Turing redefined technology forever. His “universal Turing machine” was the first modern computer, meaning it had the ability to read and write data. Before that, computers could only simulate what the computers we know now could potentially do.

3. Jack Kilby pioneers microchip technology in 1958.

U.S. engineer Jack Kilby is credited as the first person to build a working integrated circuit, which stems from the idea that electronic circuit components could be integrated. The revolutionary design put everything on one plate instead of separating them across multiple squares. Kilby won the Nobel Prize for his work in 2000. Now, we have semiconductors like the eMMC, or an embedded multimedia card, which is an advanced memory solution used for mobile applications and is the go-to for many consumer electronics.

4. First touchscreens appear in 1965.

We use touchscreens almost everywhere. From the Galaxy smartphones to Gear wearables, touchscreens are the basis of our lives. British scientist E.A. Johnson first pioneered touchscreen technology by creating the world’s first touchscreens that was used for air traffic control in the United Kingdom.

Now, we have Super AMOLED screens, which enable taps and gestures to be more responsive and allows users see stunning images on the phones in direct sunlight.

5. The lithium-ion battery prototype is built in 1985.

Without rechargeable batteries, mobile phones wouldn’t exist at all. We’d still be running to the closest payphone to make a call. In 1985, Akira Yoshino led a team at Asahi Chemical to build the first prototype for the lithium-ion battery, which is the rechargeable battery that now comes standard across a variety of smartphones. In fact, Samsung’s own powerful lithium-ion batteries are now found in almost all kinds of devices.

6. First mobile text message is sent in 1992.

With the invention of text messaging, our world changed forever – not just in the way we communicate, but also our superb ability to avoid walking into poles. Using an Oribtel 901 mobile phone, 22-year-old British test engineer Neil Papworth sent the first text message on Dec. 3, 1993, to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone. The message? A simple “Merry Christmas.”

7. The CMOS active pixel sensor is invented in 1992, allowing cameras to become faster and scalable.

In the same year, Eric A. Fossum developed sensor technology that is at the heart of every camera — technology that captures light and coverts it to electrical signals. These sensors are now used in almost all digital cameras and smartphones. The technology consumes less power – contributing to more battery life — and the sensors are extremely inexpensive to reproduce, leading to a boom in camera phones around the world.

8. John O’Sullivan develops Wi-Fi in 1996.

With the help of Australia’s national science agency, John O’Sullivan patented standards for Wi-Fi. Actually, O’Sullivan and his team were looking for a way to measure pulses coming from exploding black holes. Even though they never found a way, they did come up with a set of mathematical equations that set the basis for Wi-Fi.

9. World’s first mobile phone using LTE launched in 2010.

After LTE, or long-term evolution, came to the United States in 2009, Samsung launched the world’s first LTE mobile phone in 2010. Next came the Samsung Galaxy Indulge — the world’s first LTE smartphone. And now, LTE is also being used in tablets as well, like the Galaxy Tab 8.9.

10. The first curved smartphone display appears in 2011.

In 2011, engineers working at the Human Media Lab in Canada launched the flexible smartphone in partnership with Arizona State University. Just two years later, Samsung pioneered a prototype of a flexible OLED smartphone called YOUM. When Brian Berkeley, the vice president of engineering at Samsung Display, first demonstrated the flexible screen during his keynote speech, it sent cheers and claps all around the room. The super thin display kept its image – despite being bent backward and forward. The invention led to the curve we now see on the Galaxy S6 edge.

Samsung is now mass producing the industry’s first 128-gigabyte (GB) ultra-fast embedded memory based on the much-anticipated Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard for next-generation flagship smartphones. The new embedded memory’s UFS 2.0 interface is the most advanced JEDEC-compliant, next-generation flash memory storage specification in the world.

“With our mass production of ultra-fast UFS memory of the industry’s highest capacity, we are making a significant contribution to enable a more advanced mobile experience for consumers,” said Jee-ho Baek, Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing, Samsung Electronics. “In the future, we will increase the proportion of high-capacity memory solutions, in leading the continued growth of the premium memory market.”

UFS memory utilizes “Command Queue,” a technology that accelerates the speed of command execution in SSDs through a serial interface, significantly increasing data processing speeds compared to the 8-bit parallel-interface-based eMMC standard. As a result, Samsung UFS memory conducts 19,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) for random reading, which is 2.7 times faster than the most common embedded memory for high-end smartphones today, the eMMC 5.0. It also delivers a sequential read and write performance boost up to SSD levels, in addition to a 50 percent decrease in energy consumption. In addition, the random read speed is12 times faster than that of a typical high-speed memory card (which runs at 1,500 IOPS), and is expected to greatly improve system performance.

In the future, Samsung anticipates that UFS will support high-end mobile market needs, while eMMC solutions remain viable for the mid-market, value segments.

For random writing of data to storage, the blazingly fast UFS embedded memory operates at 14,000 IOPS and is 28 times as fast as a conventional external memory card, making it capable of supporting seamless Ultra HD video playback and smooth multitasking functions at the same time, enabling a much improved mobile experience.

Samsung’s new UFS embedded memory comes in 128GB, 64GB and 32GB versions, which are twice the capacity of its eMMC line-up, making it today’s optimal memory storage solution for high-end mobile devices.

In an attempt to provide more design flexibility to global customers, Samsung’s UFS embedded memory package, a new ePoP (embedded package on package) solution, can be stacked directly on top of a logic chip, taking approximately 50 percent less space.

Over the next several years, Samsung will continue to set the pace for memory solutions that combine truly high-performance with high capacity.

Samsung is now mass producing the industry’s first ePoP (embedded package on package) memory – a single memory package consisting of 3GB LPDDR3* DRAM, 32GB eMMC (embedded multi-media card) and a controller. For use in high-end smartphones, the extremely thin ePoP combines all essential memory components into a single package that can be stacked directly on top of the mobile processor, without taking any additional space – a distinct improvement over existing two-package eMCP memory solutions.

“By offering our new high-density ePoP memory for flagship smartphones, Samsung expects to provide its customers with significant design benefits, while enabling faster and longer operation of multi-tasking features,” Jeeho Baek, Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “We plan to expand our line-up of ePoP memory with packages involving enhancements in performance and density over the next few years, to further add to the growth of premium mobile market.”

The new ePoP provides an ideal “one-package” memory solution, satisfying the market needs for high speed, high energy efficiency and compactness. The 3GB LPDDR3 mobile DRAM inside the ePoP operates at an I/O data transfer rate of 1,866Mb/s, and sports a 64-bit I/O bandwidth.

When it comes to design efficiency, the ePoP memory saves a significant amount of space, enabling smartphone manufacturers to use the space for components like the battery pack. Because of its thinness and special heat-resistant properties, Samsung’s smartphone ePoP does not need any space beyond the 225 square millimeters (15x15mm) taken up by the mobile application processor. A conventional PoP (also 15mm x 15mm), consisting of the mobile processor and DRAM, along with a separate eMMC (11.5mm x 13mm) package, takes up 374.5 square millimeters. Replacing that set-up with a Samsung ePoP decreases the total area used by approximately 40 percent.

The single-package configuration also meets the semiconductor package height ceiling of 1.4 millimeters (mm).

OEMs can use Samsung’s ePoP memory for a wide range of mobile devices. Samsung already has been offering a similar single-package solution for wearable devices, referred to as “wearable memory”. The new configuration for phones can be easily customized not only for use in flagship smartphones but also in other sophisticated mobile devices such as high-end tablets, in collaboration with global mobile companies.