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NFC Times Exclusive Insight – In an effort to deliver on the promise of a "true mobile wallet" and, of course, boost its flagging smartphone market share in China, Samsung has struck a deal with Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services to enable the Alipay QR code-based payments service in China through Samsung Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung’s announcement today of its move into China with Samsung Pay helped the OEM make good on its objective of launching in China by the first quarter, though the launch has happened well after rival device makers Apple and Huawei launched their own mobile payments services in China.

NFC Times Exclusive – A source at LG Electronics has confirmed to NFC Times that the smartphone maker has decided to push back the launch of LG Pay from next week in order to focus on the launch of its next flagship phone, the G5. It’s possible the OEM will not launch until the second half of 2016.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – CaixaBank is the first in Europe to announce it has signed up to participate in Samsung Pay, leading an expansion of the mobile payments service to Spain.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – While LG Electronics has released few details about its planned payments service, LG Pay, or even revealed the technology it will use, there seems to be little doubt about its business model: LG believes it needs an additional payments feature to keep its devices competitive with rivals Apple, Samsung and other smartphone OEMs that might launch payments services.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung Electronics today released exact dates for when it plans to launch its mobile-payments service, Samsung Pay–Aug. 20 in South Korea and the U.S. on Sept. 28–while saying it also intends to roll out the service in the UK, Spain and China.

NFC Times Exclusive – Besides touting its much larger base of acceptance points, Samsung Electronics appears to be emphasizing what it says is a more “agnostic” approach to its technology for its forthcoming Samsung Pay platform, as compared with rival Apple Pay.  

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung is hiring established TSM vendors to assist with the provisioning and secure element management for its forthcoming Samsung Pay service, at least in some markets, sources told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive –  Besides payments, Samsung is targeting nonpayment applications, and is seeing “growing interest” in its embedded chips, Samsung Pay director Victor Kim told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive – Samsung’s NFC payments platform, Samsung Pay, is due to launch in the summer in the U.S. and South Korea. But it’s not the only payments service planned for Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6.