- Key insights: Samsung Electronics, with Barclays and Visa, is launching its own, digital wallet-native credit card, the Samsung Galaxy Card.
- What's at stake: Consumers gravitate toward digital wallets because they are fast, safe and easy to use, and card-led digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are the most popular wallets in Australia, the U.S. and Canada.
- Forward look: Point of sale digital wallet payments are forecast to grow at an 11% compound annual growth rate at the point of sale from 2025 to 2030, according to the 2026 Worldpay Global Payments report.
Samsung Electronics is adding a credit card to the menu of products within its digital wallet.
The Korean electronics company is launching its own, digital wallet-native credit card with Barclays and Visa as the Korean electronics company looks to build out its digital ecosystem. It is Samsung's first co-brand credit card in the U.S.
Called Samsung Galaxy Card, it is designed to make that ecosystem more connected by bringing payments, cash rewards, and account management directly into Samsung Wallet, according to Sih Lee, Samsung's executive vice president and head of North America fintech business.
"From our perspective, the success really means delivering the right experience that is useful, intuitive, and meaningfully integrated to the product and technology that our customers use every day," Lee told American Banker.
Similar to the
The card represents Barclays' first foray into a digital wallet-native credit card, Doug Villone, head of cards and partnerships at Barclays U.S. consumer bank, told American Banker.
"What makes this different because it's native wallet is we're actually extending all of our service APIs all the way into their operating system and their wallet," Villone told American Banker.
"Now, rather than going to our app [or] our website, you're now servicing it within [Samsung's] ecosystem completely, and that reduces login, it reduces friction, it keeps the experience consistent [and] it makes the ability to then redeem within their ecosystem and check out within the Samsung ecosystem all that much more seamless," Villone said.
The Samsung Galaxy Card is the latest addition to the company's wallet, which launched more than 10 years ago and has evolved over time to support cryptocurrency and installment payments.
"Every update that we made was focused on our users," Samsung's Lee said. "That philosophy really became the foundation of our fintech strategy, which is to focus on creating safe, seamless, and useful consumer solutions to simplify everyday financial tasks through Samsung."
Consumers gravitate toward digital wallets because they are fast, safe and easy to use, and card-led digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are the most popular wallets in Australia, the U.S. and Canada, according to the 2026 Worldpay Global Payments Report.
But it is an increasingly crowded space. PayPal, Cash App, Venmo,
"Digital wallets are the interface that everyone sees as the battleground … to provide a way better customer experience," Michael Levens, vice president, financial services payments lead at Capgemini, told American Banker.
In the U.S., 38% of Americans use digital wallets at least once per week, and 10% use them daily, according to Capital One research. About 42% of Americans use PayPal, the most popular digital wallet; 34% of customers use Apple Pay; 33% use Venmo; 24% use Cash App and 17% use Google Wallet. Most Americans consider Apple Pay their primary digital wallet, followed by PayPal.
