For years now, Samsung and Apple have been going back and forth trying to prove which company copied the other for their smartphones, but we think this time Samsung has taken things a bit too far with its newly announced Samsung Wallet.
Samsung Wallet, which we know you’ll agree looks a lot like Apple Passbook, performs many of the tasks Passbook does, except it’s exclusive to Samsung’s brand of smartphones. You’ll be able to use it for a number of barcoded items such as gift cards, membership cards, movie tickets and airline tickets. NFC was decided against for the application as Samsung says retailers prefer barcodes over NFCs as it wouldn’t require them to build new infrastructures to support it.
Samsung Wallet will be available to developers who want to preview it for test purposes. At its launch, Wallet will a number of partners supporting it including Walgreens, MLB, Hotels.com, Expedia and Booking.com. Considering the software will use only barcodes for now, we can see more companies who supported Apple Passbook jumping at the chance to support Wallet as well.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Barcode, Samsung and Wallet.