In an expected announcement, South Korean technological giant Samsung released a blockchain and decentralized application software development toolkit for developers to build a cheaper, more efficient paying app on the company’s various Galaxy Smartphones.
This move was expected by many tech experts who thought Samsung wanted to expand access to their own mobile wallet found on all Galaxy smartphones. The hope with this announcement is the SDK toolkit will receive support from several other new devices over time.
Currently, the SDK toolkit is supported only by the five devices in the Samsung Galaxy (S10e, S10, S10+, S10 5G, and Galaxy Fold) smartphone series. Samsung believes this announcement will provide more exposure to their wide range of smartphones. In addition, there is the talk of cryptocurrency support being added to the Samsung Pay payment service program at some point in the future.
On the rumor of Samsung’s new coin, Moritz von Wedekind, Samsung Head of Business Development and Fintech in Europe, was careful to stress nothing in this area has been officially announced by the tech giant. His comments can be found in an interview with Decrypt’s Adriana Hamacher.
“Samsung is a huge organization and everyone within the organization works with a blockchain to a certain extent,” said von Wedekind.
He added that the company’s electronics division in Korea is the most likely developmental site for such a coin.
The immediate goal for the SDK toolkit is to give developers the means to better manage their blockchain accounts, streamline transactions by eliminating the need for a separate transaction for different coin types. Instead, the SDK offers a gateway to the payment process through a cryptocurrency remittance. The user interface can communicate with other blockchain apps for immediate payment.
However, access to this new technology will be limited at first. To use the application, developers will need to be part of the Samsung Keystore, which is a Galaxy device-based, private storage system. All users must request access from Samsung, but once granted, the blockchain will link users to the Samsung Keystore and other external wallet programs.
The company wouldn’t confirm if users would be allowed to experiment with SDK toolkit on their own paying app. But to ensure better online security, all personal information found on the Samsung Keystore cannot be saved to an external cloud. This has been a major barrier for all paying mobile wallet apps in the past.
A final version of the SDK toolkit is expected to be released by Samsung at the end of the year.
