A new collaboration between Visa and smartphone maker Samsung electronics brings simple mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) payment capability to millions of businesses without the need for expensive hardware, maintenance, and training.
Visa’s Tap to Phone makes it easy for sellers to use Samsung’s new Galaxy XCover Pro Android smartphones to accept payments without any additional hardware. It’s as simple as downloading an app that will enable millions of sellers everywhere to accept contactless payments using current-generation mobile devices.
Customers can make payments in seconds by simply tapping their contactless card, smartphone or smartwatch to the seller’s Tap to Phone-enabled smartphone.
“The Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro is a robust retail POS platform for a true retail digital transformation,” said Mary Kay Bowman, Visa’s Head of Seller Solutions. “Its applications for businesses such as healthcare, airlines, and restaurants are a great example of how Visa together with Samsung can democratize access to payment experiences that consumers increasingly expect, no matter where they are.”
Tap to Phone targets global micro-sellers
The new Visa-Samsung partnership will bring Visa’s Tap to Phone technology to a wide variety of industries including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and logistics.
Visa estimates 40% of the national GDP in emerging markets is created by small businesses and micro-sellers, but fewer than 10% of small business sellers, merchants and vendors can accept digital payments. Visa believes Tap to Phone technology can help these businesses increase sales by preventing lost sales and improving cash flow and margins with an easy to use hardware-free mPOS solution.
Imagine the impact of being able to accept mobile payments at kiosks, street stalls, food trucks, clothing shops, or by the self-employed and professional service providers wherever they do business? All with just a smartphone and the tap of a contactless card or payments enabled mobile device?
Visa now has 16 Tap to Phone pilot programs around the globe in nine key markets with high contactless payment penetration. Partner-led pilot programs are underway in Canada, UK, Ukraine, Turkey, Costa Rica, and Malaysia, with additional pilots also planned in Poland, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia in the next several months.
New mPOS payment possibilities
Samsung Electronics’ new Galaxy XCover Pro is an Android smartphone designed and engineered for workers across a variety of industries. The XCover Pro will feature Samsung POS, a mobile point-of-sale feature that is part of Visa’s Tap to Phone technology program.
Tap to Phone’s sophisticated software inside the new Samsung smartphone builds on EMV chip transactions to provide the same functionality as the most common POS hardware.
The new smartphone is aimed at frontline workers in industries like including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and logistics who will appreciate the ease-of-use and high level of security built into the device.
Samsung’s defense-grade, multi-layered Knox platform which offers advanced security features like hardware-backed protection, data isolation and encryption, and boot- and run-time protection to ensure that business-critical information is protected against intrusion, malware, and other threats.
Samsung Knox allows companies to quickly and easily set up and customize the smartphone, and manage firmware versions, putting IT administrators in control of the management and updates of their devices whether in-store, in the warehouse, or in the field.
The Galaxy XCover Pro will be available as an Enterprise Edition, providing two years of market availability and four years of security updates to ensure business continuity.
This looks like a very smart partnership that could have a wide-ranging positive impact for enterprises betting on the future of retail to the tens of millions of micro-businesses in emerging and developed markets, not to mention fast, easy, secure payments for billions of consumers.
You can get more information about the new Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro here as well as Visa’s announcement here.
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