The embedded chip in Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 will eventually come preloaded with payment applications from other brands, in addition to Visa payWave, the device maker revealed Thursday, in announcing its much-anticipated Galaxy S 4 smartphone.
Samsung said additional payment applications would be preloaded in coming months in its latest NFC-enabled Galaxy smartphone. That will follow the preloading of Visa payWave in the device. Visa announced a global deal with Samsung last month at the Mobile World Congress, saying that banks or even mobile operators could use the chip to roll out payWave and personalize the application with Visa’s mobile provisioning service.
The deal with Visa is nonexclusive, and Samsung said Thursday that “more payment applets from multiple brands are planned to be preloaded into the embedded secure element in coming months.”
As NFC Times has reported, that could include a MasterCard PayPass application on the same chip as PayWave.
Samsung did confirm Thursday that the Galaxy S 4 would be the first of its NFC-enabled devices to preload payWave, under the agreement with Visa. Other Samsung NFC devices are expected to come preloaded with the Visa applet this year.
Samsung is expected to include an embedded secure element in just about every one of its NFC devices, as it has starting in mid-2012. All Galaxy S IIIs, the popular predecessor to the Galaxy S 4, pack an embedded chip, but few are used.
Samsung in the past has agreed to deactivate the chip when requested to do so by mobile operators, which have their own plans to roll out NFC, but on SIM cards. Samsung is likely to continue to bow to demands by telcos that heavily subsidize its phones. But the device maker's clout is growing.
In its announcement Thursday, Samsung said that NFC payments would be “commercially available on the Galaxy S 4 on a global basis using the embedded secure element, “in addition to using the SIM-based secure element.”
Most major operators with NFC rollout plans are expected to stick with SIM cards they issue to enable secure NFC applications.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S 4 supports other NFC applications, including those for syncing content and connecting devices.
During its presentation in New York City, Samsung noted that users could tap the Galaxy S 4 to the Samsung HomeSync home hub storage device to view content on the phone or, likely, to initiate a data transfer from the phone to the storage device.
HomeSync is similar to the NFC-enabled Personal Content Station, which Sony demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Samsung Thursday also demonstrated a Group Play application, which enables up to eight users to share music, photos, documents and games. The demo showed several users playing the same song on their Galaxy S 4s by tapping their phones together, so an NFC-connection is likely used to open a Wi-Fi direct connection.
Samsung introduced S Beam, which uses NFC to more quickly open a Wi-Fi Direct connection between two devices, on its Galaxy S III.
Among the non-NFC features the Galaxy S 4 supports to enable mobile-commerce is technology from U.S.-based Mobeam, which announced Thursday that the Galaxy S 4 supports its technology, which it says converts 1-D bar codes into beams of light that standard scanners at retail locations could read. The technology would enable users to beam coupons, loyalty cards and gift cards for redemption, without retailers having to install new equipment, said the company.
The 5-inch Galaxy S 4 is expected to be released by the end of April.