On 24th June 2020 Samsung announced a partnership between Samsung Pay, digital bank platform Curve and Mastercard to launch Samsung Pay Card. Samsung Pay Card will be launched in the UK later in 2020. The partnership will deliver a digital wallet which enables Samsung smartphone owners to manage and control their finances conveniently by linking their loyalty cards and bank cards in a single place for viewing and managing their accounts. Services such as these are being enabled by the EU Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), and in the UK open banking, which requires banks to make account information available to third-parties via APIs, when authorized by their customers.

Last month we provided our point-of-view on the launch of Samsung Card in the US, in our report “Can Samsung's Brand Stretch To Financial Services?” as Samsung targets customer retention among Samsung smartphone owners and attempts to close the services gap on Apple. The drivers for the UK launch of Samsung Card are similar to those of the US.

Apple Card is currently only available in the US with plans to expand into other countries, so in the UK Samsung may well beat Apple to launch. Apple Card and Samsung Card are different propositions. In the US Apple Card is a credit card while Samsung Card is a payment card linked to a money management account. In the UK Samsung Pay Card appears to be a digital only wallet. Recent consumer research conducted by Strategy Analytics research shows that UK consumers still prefer to use payment cards when making payments, with contactless cards more popular than mobile contactless payments, so I would expect Samsung will also provide a physical card at launch or at some point in the future. Samsung partnered with fintech company, SoFi, in the US, but in the UK partnered with Curve.

With a number of players in the tech sector looking to financial services for growth, here are some important consumer-related questions they should address:

•           What benefits and features are most important for consumers when they select financial services and products and to what extent does this vary by country and different clusters of consumers?

•           How well placed are different OEM brands to offer payment cards and other financial services to mobile users?

•           Which financial services should mobile operators and OEMs provide e.g. debit, credit cards, loans, insurance, etc. and do these needs vary by country?

•           What do consumers think of the digital financial services they currently use and what are their current pain points, plus points and preferences for consumers when using digital financial services on connected devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, PCs, and connected TVs, etc.)?