Samsung has decided to expand the services of its in-built digital wallet facilities beyond traditional holdings like fiat currencies. During its annual Galaxy Unpacked event this week, the South Korean tech giant said Samsung Wallet will now support stablecoins as well. Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to reserve assets like fiat currencies and gold in 1:1 ratio.
Samsung said the move is towards embracing newer, more advanced forms of finances and catering to the deversified demands of its users. The development was announced at the annual Galaxy Unpacked showcase on Wednesday.
“This will make Samsung one of the first major mobile brands to bring native stablecoins to a smartphone, enabling fast and trusted digital value transfers,” said Samsung product manager Lee Dinham as commenting on the situation. “With this, Samsung Wallet becomes the foundation of a connected financial ecosystem across Galaxy devices.”
Samsung Wallet was launched in June 2022. It allows users to save their cards digitally onto their Samsung devices for instant online and retail payment services as well as secure credential management.
With stablecoins such as USDT and USDC among others seeing widespread adoption in multiple parts of the world, Samsung deemed it fit to start supporting payment through these tokens. Stablecoins have become popular store-of-value assets and are increasingly being used to facilitate instant cross-border payments.
Galaxy users will soon be able to hold stablecoins, collect spending rewards, and process transactions from within the existing Samsung wallet. Essentially, the tech major will merge its traditional finance service with Web3.
As of now, the company has not disclosed which stablecoins it plans to support. Details on the rollout timeline for stabecoin support and its partners for the Wallet functionality also remain undisclosed for now.
This, however, is not the first time that Samsung has forayed into the crypto sphere.
Last year in October, it partnered Coinbase to let over 73 million of its U.S.-based Galaxy buyers invest in crypto directly via the Samsung Wallet.
Samsung’s crypto-friendly approach gives it an edge in its competition with Apple, which has maintained a safe distance from the digital assets ecosystem citing financial dangers from these volatile assets.
In May, Samsung also made a $408 million investment in Dunamu, the parent company of South Korea’s Upbit exchange.
The company, during the Unpacked event, unveiled the next generation Galaxy Fold and Flip 8 devices alongside the Galaxy Watch9 and Ultra 2.
Going bullish on AI, Samsung said, its devices will be shipping with proactive “agentic” AI features, enhanced Gemini task automation, pre-installed Gemini Notebook, and a six-month trial of Google AI Pro.
