Samsung SDS, the technology subsidiary of Samsung Group, has signed an agreement with telecommunications firm Syniverse to develop a wallet-agnostic mobile payments platform designed to facilitate cross-region mobile transactions for businesses.
In an announcement at the 2020 International CES conference in Las Vegas, the companies said the platform would help mobile operators, as well as enterprises in logistics, financial, travel and hospitality, media and retail markets.
Samsung SDS: Today the cost to consumers and merchants is too high
The agreement combines Samsung SDS’s ‘Nexledger Universal’ platform, which is essentially a blockchain-powered application programming interface (API), with two of Syniverse’s products: its blockchain solution co-created with IBM ‘Universal Commerce’, and its messaging service ‘Mobile Engagement’.
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The companies want “to develop a common platform that will work with any mobile operator and allow any mobile user to send money, loyalty points, or other digital currencies to other mobile users or merchants on a global basis”.
Based on the USP “your phone number has become your easiest payment method”, the new partners will use blockchain technology to create a “phone-to-phone or phone-to-merchant payment engine” according to Samsung SDS America’s president Scott Koo.
“The need for simple, fast, secure, auditable and cost-effective monetary transactions is growing worldwide,” says Koo. “Today the cost to consumers and merchants is too high.”
Syniverse’s CEO Dean Douglas extends the companies’ goal further, saying the two want to achieve “universal financial transaction trust for every connected device in the world”.
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