To counter Apple Pay's entry in South Korea, Samsung launched the integration of Samsung Pay with Naver Pay two months ago. It allows Samsung Pay users to make payments for products and services inside smartphone apps and other online shopping services. Since the integration, Naver Pay has seen a massive surge in users.
A report from Korea Herald claims that Naver Pay saw a 186% surge in new installations. This new service is now available not only in convenience stores and franchise stores but also at small locations like clinics, gas stations, hospitals, local restaurants, and pharmacies. Naver also said that average offline payments per user also jumped 123% since Samsung Pay integration.
Earlier today, a Naver Financial official said, “We see that the number of app installations for Samsung Pay's interlinked offline payment service has significantly increased.” Samsung Pay's integration with Naver Pay allows 31.5 million users to make payments with their smartphones at locations that accept payments using cards with a magnetic stripe. Likewise, they can also make payments at 550,000 online stores affiliated with Naver Pay.
Samsung has also signed a partnership deal with Kakao Pay, which has more than 40% market share in the first half of this year. It is being reported that Samsung Pay will no longer be a free service for credit card issuing companies as Samsung is thinking of charging them a per transaction fee, similar to Apple Pay.
