BARCELONA, Spain – NFC Times Exclusive (UPDATED): The Galaxy S6 will carry an embedded secure element, mainly to enable nonpayment applications, while supporting NFC payments with host-card emulation and storing payment tokens in a secure area on the processor, an ARM-based TrustZone, a representative of Samsung told NFC Times. It's unclear, however, whether the payment tokens might alternatively be stored on the embedded secure element.

Samsung unveiled its new smartphone flagship and companion curved-screen Galaxy S6 Edge, along with its new payments service, Samsung Pay, on Sunday in Barcelona. The service, to launch in the summer in the U.S. and South Korea, combines proprietary mag-stripe mobile-payments technology that Samsung bought with its recent acquisition of U.S.-based start-up LoopPay, with standard NFC.

NFC payment transactions will be given priority over transactions using the LoopPay technology, if the POS terminal supports NFC. Samsung Pay, like rival Apple Pay, will support tokenization of payment applications, but unlike Apple, the Samsung Pay NFC applications will support HCE and will store the tokens in the ARM-based TrustZone on the processor, said Samsung Electronics senior vice president Injong Rhee, who spoke at a press conference organized by Visa during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. He also said during the conference that the tokens could be stored on the embedded secure element, in addition to the TrustZone. But later he indicated to NFC Times that the tokens would be stored only in TrustZone.