MasterCard to Support Samsung Pay Tokenization in Europe

MasterCard will provide tokenization technology to the Samsung Pay mobile wallet when it launches in Europe.

Samsung aims to launch Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service that utilizes tokenization and near-field communication similar to Apple Pay, for its phones in the U.S. and South Korea later this summer. MasterCard has already agreed to provide tokenization support for the service in the U.S. Both MasterCard and Visa have made a push to promote tokenization support to increase their positions in the digital payments world as well as improve the security of payments made from card accounts. 

More merchants are installing NFC readers at the point of sale as part of their upgrades to EMV-chip card acceptance, but NFC technology is still far from ubiquity in the U.S. To broaden Samsung Pay's acceptance, Samsung purchased LoopPay this year to add technology that communicates wirelessly with standard magnetic-stripe terminals.

The Korean electronics giant's payment service has been piloted in South Korea as part of a gradual introduction. Samsung Pay had been scheduled to debut widely this month but in an investor call last month the company said it would delay the launch of its Apple Pay competitor to September.

Samsung said in its release that it plans to roll out the service in Europe after discussing it further with banks and other businesses on the continent.