‘(Teller) Made for India’ – How Samsung Pay is Scripting its Success Story in India

Samsung Pay, Samsung Electronics’ digital payments platform, is fast gaining acceptance as a revolutionary payments system since its launch on March 22 in India. The mobile payments service is already being used by hundreds of thousands of consumers in India.

In fact, Samsung Pay has seen nearly 50% adoption in Samsung’s recently-launched flagships Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

The introduction of Samsung Pay in just-launched Galaxy J7 Pro smartphone and Samsung Pay Mini in Galaxy J7 Max smartphone is expected to boost the reach of Samsung Pay in the country. Samsung Pay Mini, designed to cater to the unique requirements of Indian mid-segment consumers, provides a comprehensive platform for government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as well as e-wallets.

Samsung Pay Mini caters to the unique requirements of Indian mid-segment consumers

Samsung Pay is not only winning the hearts of consumers in India, but is also being recognized by the Payments Industry.

Earlier this month, Samsung Pay snapped up three awards — ‘Best Contactless Innovation of the year’, ‘Best Mobile Payments Solution of the year’, and ‘Best Payments Innovation of the year’ – at the Payments and Cards Awards held on June 7 in Mumbai.

Payments & Cards Summit is a comprehensive platform providing a unique venue point to discuss the current situation, future trends and innovations in payments, cards and mobile markets. The Summit is about who innovates first, market share and making a profit in this competitive industry.

The launch of Samsung Pay in India was the culmination of many months of collaborative work among Samsung’s R&D, product and marketing teams.

Sanjay Razdan, Director, Samsung India Electronics Ltd.

“Samsung Pay background work started as early as November 2015 when Samsung India decided that we need a key differentiation for our consumers,” said Mr. Sanjay Razdan, Director, Samsung India Electronics Ltd.

Nearly two years ago, when the India team started work on Samsung Pay, they had not realized that it will be such a massive challenge to bring Samsung Pay to India. The sheer scale of the project made the task daunting. The team was not only tasked with bringing India’s big banks on one platform, but it also had to ensure the participation of network companies – Visa, MasterCard and Amex – to make Samsung Pay a success in India.

Samsung Pay team engrossed in discussion ahead of the launch

The Samsung Pay team in India simultaneously worked with retail PoS (Point of Sale) solutions providers such as Pine Labs, Ezetap and Mswipe to ensure that their machines would accept payments made through Samsung Pay. It also worked closely with India’s central bank RBI, which is the regulator for banking system.

Even as all this was happening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Demonetization of high-value currency notes in a dramatic move on November 8, 2016. Demonetization accelerated India’s transition towards a digital economy and Team Samsung thought it was a great opportunity to make a mark with Samsung Pay.

In most western countries, where Samsung Pay had been launched, credit cards were the dominant mode of digital payment. But India, with just 23 million credit card users, was very different.

Manasvi Vedhera, DGM, Samsung India Electronics Ltd.

“We came up with a debit card strategy for India as there are around 600 million plus debit card users. But we wanted to make our product even more interesting, so we started working on localization at a very early stage. Paytm and UPI were the two use cases that we started work on to ensure we have better use cases so that less credit cards is not seen as a disadvantage,” said Mr. Manasvi Vedhera, DGM, Samsung India Electronics Ltd.

Localization, part of Samsung’s ‘Make for India’ strategy, saw the integration of Samsung Pay with digital wallets such as Paytm and government-backed Unified Payments Interface or UPI. The addition of these local payments solutions is a big reason for the rising appeal of Samsung Pay in India.

“Paytm and UPI development were big challenges as these were new integrations and the teams were not aware of the complexity. At times it was a round the clock team work between R&D, business and partners to ensure that there is no slip up on the schedule etc.,” said Mr. Sanjay Razdan.

One of the biggest compliments for Samsung Pay came from Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, or the National Institution for Transforming India, earlier this year.

Mr. HC Hong, President and CEO, Samsung Southwest Asia with Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog

Mr. Kant, a key driver of the Government’s ‘Make in India’ policy, said, “This is a unique innovation. I think it will simplify matters. It will help India technologically leapfrog and take India towards digital economy, which is what PM Modi’s dream all about.”