Andrew Heinzman
When Samsung revealed the Galaxy S22 lineup last February, it sneakily announced a plan to combine Samsung Pay and Samsung Pass into one app. It’s an obvious and overdue move, but starting today, Galaxy owners in the US, UK, and parts of Europe can use the new Samsung Wallet.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the original Samsung Wallet launched nearly a decade ago. It was killed and replaced by the more ambitious Samsung Pay in 2015 (or 2016 in some regions).
Killing off Wallet wasn’t a popular move in 2015, but it made sense. Unfortunately, Samsung kind of backed itself in a corner with the “Pay” branding. The company started shoving passwords, biometrics, digital car keys, and other forms of identification in the Samsung Pass app—a lot of people would like to keep this information with their credit cards and airline boarding passes!
Wait, why weren’t boarding passes stored in Samsung Pass? I guess it doesn’t matter, because the new Samsung Wallet puts all this stuff in one place. It also has some neat features, including SmartThings integration, a handy Quick Access panel, and cryptocurrency monitoring.
Samsung says that Wallet is available today, though we don’t see it in Google Play or the Galaxy Store. The app is currently exclusive to the US, UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France.
Source: Samsung
