Over the past few months we’ve heard about Samsung developing two new services called Samsung Pay Mini and Bixby, an artificial intelligence-powered virtual personal assistant. The company hasn’t confirmed these services officially as yet but its website has now revealed their existence. References to both Bixby and Samsung Pay Mini have been spotted on a page called Samsung Pay Beta on the company’s website.
We first heard about Samsung Pay Mini a few months back. It’s believed to be a toned-down version of the Samsung Pay mobile payments service. Reports suggest that Samsung Pay Mini will enable users to make online payments on websites and it may also work on non-Samsung Android-powered handsets.
Bixby is believed to be the new AI voice assistant that Samsung introduces with the Galaxy S8. It’s going to be similar to the likes of Siri, Cortana, and Alexa. Bixby will be able to do a variety of tasks in response to simple voice commands from users.
The Samsung Pay Beta page on Samsung’s website hints at a possible integration between the AI assistant and the mobile payments service. Samsung may presumably allow users to send money or make payments using Samsung Pay by simply commanding Bixby to do so.
It’s unclear right now when this Samsung Pay beta will be launched so that users are allowed to test these services. I guess it may not happen until Bixby is made official at the Galaxy S8 announce expected to take place this April.