By Sang Ahn, Vice President and GM of Samsung Pay, North America Service Business, Samsung Electronics

Now more than ever, people are counting on technology to help them make contactless payments, shop, and manage their finances without leaving the house. Samsung is here to help. Our mission is to make everyday life easier so you can focus on what’s most important.

We created Samsung Pay¹ because we believe the most powerful tool for managing your finances is the device that’s always at your fingertips.

From the first day of our launch, Samsung Pay has continued to innovate and deliver new mobile payments experiences for an expanding range of financial tasks. This summer we will help users take care of a critical area of life that impacts everyone – our finances and financial lives.

Five Years of Innovation

When we launched Samsung Pay in 2015, we brought never before seen technologies to the mobile payments experience.

Back then, Samsung Pay was the only mobile payments platform with built-in magnetic secure transmission technology (MST) along with NFC functionality, making it possible to pay practically anywhere you can swipe a card. Even today, Samsung’s MST technology remains unique among mobile wallets.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve collaborated with leading innovators to bring new experiences to life that make it easier to take care of the things that matter most. Samsung Pay was the first mobile payments platform to launch a rewards program, allowing users to earn Samsung Rewards points with each transaction, in addition to the points they earn from their underlying bank cards; the first mobile payments platform to launch a Cashback service for online shopping (Samsung Pay Cashback); and we forged partnerships with top financial institutions to ensure Samsung Pay is accepted virtually anywhere.

All told, consumers have relied on Samsung Pay to make billions of transactions, earn more than 13 billion Samsung Rewards points, use Cashback to receive discounts from select online merchants, and use Tap&Pay to breeze through millions of public transit rides.

The Next Innovation

In 2020, Samsung Pay will be expanding our service from being a rewarding way to shop and pay, to also being a rewarding way to manage money. Over the past year we have been busy developing a mobile-first money management platform. Our vision is to help consumers better manage their money so that they can achieve their dreams and goals. Now more than ever, mobile financial services and money management tools will play an even bigger role in our daily lives while also opening up new possibilities.

As a first step to this broader vision, this summer Samsung in partnership with SoFi will introduce a new Samsung Pay experience with an innovative debit card backed by a cash management account. We are excited to share more details in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, as we celebrate five years of innovation for Samsung Pay, we are proud of what we have achieved so far and can’t wait to help our users do even more with their money.

1 Compatible with Samsung Pay-enabled Galaxy phones (Galaxy S6 and later) and select wearable devices. For the full list, see: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/app/samsung-pay