Samsung Eyeing LoopPay as Partner for Mobile Payment System to Rival Apple Pay

Samsung may be developing a mobile payment system to rival Apple Pay, reports Re/code . The Korean handset manufacturer reportedly is negotiating with payments startup LoopPay about the system, which it plans to debut it in 2015.





The combined Samsung and LoopPay system would allow customers to wave their Samsung phones at payment terminals instead of swiping credit cards or paying with cash or check. Samsung could leverage NFC in its phones and use that standard to wirelessly process payments.



A partnership with LoopPay could expand the service to a variety of new and old payment terminals. The LoopPay technology mimics a card swipe by recording payment information from a card's magnetic strip and transmitting those details to a retail card reader. Since LoopPay does not require NFC or any other wireless standard, the LoopPay system can be used at most payment terminals capable of swiping credit cards.



Similar to Apple Pay, the Samsung system also may adopt tokenization to secure the transaction and may include fingerprint recognition technology, which Samsung has included on its latest Galaxy S5 smartphone.



Apple Pay rolled out in October of this year and interest in the service has remained strong. A recent expansion added banks such as TD Bank and retailers such as Staples. With this latest boost in adoption, Apple Pay now supports cards representing about 90 percent of U.S. credit card purchases by volume.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, December 16

$36 WORTH OF FREE APPS! 9 awesome paid iPhone apps that are free for a limited time

This has been a great week for paid iPhone and iPad apps that have gone on sale for free, but we have a few more gems to share with you before the week is done. Thursday's list included seven great paid iOS apps that were made available for free for a limited time (a few of them are still free if you hurry), but today we have nine apps regularly worth a combined $36 and each and every one is free for a short time.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, October 24

YOU NEED THIS: How to find out which apps are killing your iPhone's battery life

Relatively poor battery life is one of the biggest complaints people have about Apple's iPhone lineup, and the iPhone 6 isn't really expected to make any huge advancements in this area. The next-generation iPhones are indeed expected to have bigger batteries than current models, but they'll also have larger displays and other new power-gulping features.

As much as people complain about battery life, few actually make an effort to adjust their usage patterns in an effort to extend each charge as long as possible. For those interested in getting more out of their batteries, there's a nifty new iPhone app that will be a huge help.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, August 28

EEP: Dangerous Android malware can do anything it wants with over 500K infected devices

A new piece of dangerous malware has apparently been discovered, RT.com reports, and it's running on more than half a million Android devices from the U.S., Europe and Russia. The malicious program, which has been discovered by Russian security firm Group-IB, gives attackers complete control of those devices once it’s installed.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, August 07

IT'S ABOUT TIME: The worst may finally be over for BlackBerry

Things have been getting better for BlackBerry over the past year mainly because, as Lennon-McCartney might have sung about the company's fortunes last year, "they can't get no worse." However, Reuters reports that leaked internal company memos show that BlackBerry says it's finished its painful restructuring process and is ready to start hiring new personnel and acquiring new companies.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, August 05

HUGE MYSTERY SOLVED: Here's why your cable guy never shows up on time

Now we know why Comcast's customer service is so terrible — basically, Comcast puts enormous pressure on its employees to upsell its customers on more expensive services while putting significantly less pressure on them to resolve customer problems effectively. And now The Verge has written a new report that seemingly solves the mystery of why Comcast's technicians almost never show up on time, and unsurprisingly it's because Comcast has once again decided that its bottom line is more important than delivering good service.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, August 04

REVIEW: This is the only iPad stylus you should care about

Let's be frank for a moment: most smartphone and tablet accessories are garbage. Countless companies race to the bottom and do everything they can to flood the market with cheap cases, chargers, charms, covers and anything else they can churn out of factories in China. As a result, it can be painfully difficult to find high-quality accessories because we often have no choice but to dig through a mountain of trash to get to them.

If you're looking for a stylus for your iPad, Android tablet, iPhone or Android phone, I've done the digging for you.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, July 14

Netflix pro tip: How to find movies that don’t suck

Netflix is a fantastic service that has and will continue to change the home entertainment landscape. But despite how disruptive the service have been — and this is one of those rare cases where "disruptive" is being used to describe a company that actually disrupted something — it can still be infuriatingly difficult to find good content amid all of the stale movies and TV shows in Netflix's library.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, July 10

Get $11 worth of paid apps FOR FREE: 5 great paid iPhone apps that are free for a limited time

Can we ever really have enough apps on our iPhones and iPads? It's pretty great how the simple act of taking 10 seconds to download a new app can completely change your smartphone experience. Just a few dollars is often all it takes — but sometimes we can do it for free. Today, we have five nifty paid apps to share with you that are currently on sale for free for a limited time. See anything you like? Click the links at the end of each section to get them before these sales are over.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, July 09

Battlefield Hardline is coming to E3 2014 – watch the leaked trailer now

Shortly after EA confirmed the existence of Battlefield Hardline, the next game in the enormously popular first-person shooter series, a YouTube user leaked an extensive 7 minute trailer, exposing the new mutliplayer modes and the single-player campaign. EA had originally planned on saving the reveal for E3, but as with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare earlier this month, the leak was almost automatic.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, May 28

Xbox VP: It was a mistake to ‘sugar-coat’ the Xbox One controversy

Long before sales figures and game releases dominated the headlines, the only thing any gamer wanted to talk about was Microsoft's radical online strategy for the Xbox One. As it was originally described, the Xbox One was going to be an online-only console in the strictest sense -- if you weren't connected to the Internet, the device wouldn't function. After several unsuccessful attempts to reach a middle ground with consumers, Microsoft threw in the towel and reverted to the standard policies of the previous generation.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, March 14

3 tips for keeping everything you do online a secret

For the past several months, infamous NSA leaker Edward Snowden has confounded the United States government's attempts to track him online and stop him from releasing further damaging damaging information about its intelligence gathering activities. How has he been able to do this ? The Wall Street Journal reports that Snowden this week gave three simple tips to help make sure that no one can track your online activity: Encrypt your entire hard drive, use Tor to keep yourself completely anonymous online, and enable browser extensions that block third parties' ability to track you.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, March 11

19 million reasons no one cares if you hate the Comcast-TWC merger

So, you think the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable is a horrible idea. You aren't alone. However, what you think matters very little because Comcast has deployed an army of lobbyists on Capitol Hill to do its bidding and make sure its proposed TWC merger will sail through with as little resistance as possible.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, March 03

GALAXY S5 LEAK: Details leak for not one but two upcoming Galaxy S5 models

A new round of leaked benchmark results seem to indicate that Samsung will unveil two different Galaxy S5 flagship devices in the coming weeks that will be differentiated by varying specs. Last year, Samsung also launched different Galaxy S4 versions in different markets on day 1, but the only different component in those devices was the processor.



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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, February 10

These are the 5 games that could win the console war for the PS4

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launched to a great deal of fanfare in November. Thousands of anxious consumers lined up at their local retailers at midnight to be among the first to experience the next generation of video games. Over 7 million consoles have already been sold, anticipation is at an all time high...but we haven't had a great reason to turn on our new consoles in almost a month.



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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, January 24

This awesome iOS 7 tweak finally lets iPhone fans drink the Kool-Aid

Smartphone enthusiasts who don't use Apple products and make it their business to chastise iPhone users online at every opportunity often tell Apple fans that they "drink the Kool-Aid," or have an unquestioning and irrational loyalty to Apple. iPhone users argue that there are other reasons they have chosen Apple's handset as their smartphone of choice, and the whole argument has gotten rather boring. Kool-Aid isn't always bad though, and a nifty new jailbreak tweak for iOS 7 borrows various bright Kool-Aid colors to spice up Apple's iOS 7 software.



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Posted in 2014 at 03:35PM, January 21