20 August 2015.
Samsung is launching its own mobile payment system Samsung Pay in South Korea today.
It is also due to be launched in China, the US, the UK and Spain later this year.
Samsung Pay allows users to pay for items using their Samsung smartphone. Users must put their card details onto their smartphone, and will then be able to hold their phone near a shop's payment terminal, select the card they want o pay with, and authorise the payment with their fingerprint.
Samsung will not make any profits from Samsung Pay directly, but hopes that it will be appealing enough to convince users to buy a Samsung smartphone.
It will face tough competition in the mature South Korean mobile payments market, where rivals Naver Pay, BankWalletKakao and KakaoPay are already well-established.
Internationally, it will also have to compete with other mobile payment systems including Apple Pay and Android Pay.
