Italian global banking and financial services provider UniCredit is partnering with Samsung to make Samsung Pay available to its Italian customers.
Samsung Pay became available Thursday, allowing users to load UniCredit credit cards, MyPay and MyOne prepaid and debit cards for payment directly from the Samsung Pay app. Samsung Pay operates through a Near Field Communication chip and secure element on the handset of a Samsung device.
Customers using Samsung Pay through an enabled Samsung device will authorize payment through a fingerprint or iris scan, or a PIN, before holding the smartphone over the point-of-sale to initiate an NFC transaction. However, the Samsung Pay app works with terminals without NFC technology for both contactless and magnetic stripe payments.
"We are living in a world that is increasingly digital, characterized by a speed of change like we have never seen before — and where people are constantly looking for personalized and instant services to meet their needs, anytime and anywhere," Gianni Franco Papa, general manager of UniCredit, said in a Thursday press release.
The demand for instant services also applies to the financial sector, Papa said.
"Customers ask for new ways to communicate with the bank and to manage their operations in a simpler way, as shown by the significant growth in the usage of our online and mobile channels in Italy," he added.
UniCredit says it has more than 3.1 million active online customers, 1.75 million mobile customers and an increase in remote services sales last year.
