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[Updated] Absa and Samsung confirm Samsung Pay will be in SA next week

Update

Director: Product and Marketing at Samsung South Africa Justin Hume has confirmed that Samsung Pay would be available to some Absa clients next week.

“We have been going through a phase of what we call closed-beta testing for the past couple of weeks with the banks. We now have Samsung Pay operating and we have tested it in a closed environment. We’re now looking at, all things being equal, going into what we call an open-beta test next week,” Hume told htxt.africa.

Absa will invite certain clients to this open-beta and Hume adds that customers will also be able to apply via the Samsung website.

Should this go well the firm will likely roll Samsung Pay out to the masses at the end of August or the beginning of September.

Hume says he is confident that the open-beta test will go well.

Original story follows below

It has been three years since Samsung launched its contactless payment app Samsung Pay, and now it is finally coming to South Africa.

Absa revealed that not only is Samsung Pay coming to SA, but its customers would get early access to it.

“Absa, in association with Samsung South Africa, will soon be offering its customers early access to Samsung Pay before the service is commercially launched in South Africa. The partnership with Samsung Pay will give Absa customers even more choice on how they can make payments,” the bank said according to a message seen by TechCentral.

We have contacted Absa which confirmed the news adding that the early access programme would likely start next week.

The bank says that early access to Samsung Pay will be available to all Absa customers though you will need to be using a Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+, Note8, S8, S8+, S7, S7 Edge or A8, with support for the 2017 A5 and 2017 A7 coming soon.

At time of publishing, Samsung has not officially responded to our request for comment. A source inside the company, who would like to remain anonymous, has confirmed that they are far down the line with both Absa and Standard Bank and that the solution is in open beta with selected customers by invitation only.

Our source believes that the solution will be in market within the next two months and that the move to implement Samsung Pay at this stage is deliberate to coincide with the new flagship devices that will be launched next month.

Samsung Pay is something we have been waiting for since 2016 when Samsung launched the now infamous Galaxy Note 7 with a promise that the payment app would be coming to South Africa soon.

We were also told at the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S9 earlier this year that the South Korean firm was working closely with banks to bring the app to South Africa and that labour appears to be bearing fruit at long last.

 

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