Former Samsung Pay heads launch new iPhone-compatible mobile payment startup

AppleInsider

Former Samsung Pay heads have launched a new mobile payment solution to take on Apple Pay called OV Valet that works with magstripe readers and NFC.

OV Valet mobile payment platform

The new startup is designed to be much more universally accepted compared to NFC payment platforms like Apple Pay. Users have a small fob that is able to carry out their credit card payments with the press of a button.

FinTech fans may recognize the underlying technology of OV Valet. Originally debuting as LoopPay, a fob or iPhone case could store multiple credit cards and be held close to any mag stripe reader to pay. It would broadcast a signal that mimicked the magnetic field of a credit card's magnetic strip.

Not long after the Massachusetts company debuted its initial LoopPay products, Samsung snatched them up for $250 million dollars to compete with Apple Pay. LoopPay then became the basis for Samsung Pay. Now, the original founders of LoopPay have licensed the technology back to launch OV Valet.

Even now, many places do not accept NFC contactless payments. That is what makes the new version of LoopPay, OV Valet, so appealing. OV Valet still works with magnetic readers but now NFC readers as well. Because of support for both magstrip readers and NFC through a contactless fob, 94 percent of merchants in the U.S. accept OV Valet.

Restaurants are a friction spot for Apple Pay as waiters often still have to take your card to another location to check out. Apple Pay obviously won't work in that scenario and opens up customers to have their card skimmed or number stolen.

The OV Valet fob connects to your iPhone to hold multiple credit cards at once. You can click the button once for your primary card or twice for your secondary card. It then transmits -- either through NFC or magnetic signal -- a one-time use token for the payment. It also acts as a Bluetooth tracker and alerts you if you leave it behind.

OV Valet is launching as a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo where people can preorder their own OV Valet fob.

red oak

This reminds me of that start-up that sold car rear view camera systems.    DOA.   Everything will be NFC in 3 - 5 years.   Any window of opportunity is rapidly closing by the day  

andrew_osu

red oak said:

This reminds me of that start-up that sold car rear view camera systems.    DOA.   Everything will be NFC in 3 - 5 years.   Any window of opportunity is rapidly closing by the day  

This IS NFC as well as compatible with mag stripe readers. There’s no downside. 

red oak

OMG.    This thing requires is own non-smartphone hardware device.   Its worse than I thought! 

mike1

Restaurants are a friction spot for Apple Pay as waiters often still have to take your card to another location to check out. Apple Pay obviously won't work in that scenario and opens up customers to have their card skimmed or number stolen.

Maybe I missed something, but how does this overcome this problem? Still need to give a server your actual card, right?

georgebmac

Andrew_OSU said:

red oak said:

This reminds me of that start-up that sold car rear view camera systems.    DOA.   Everything will be NFC in 3 - 5 years.   Any window of opportunity is rapidly closing by the day  

This IS NFC as well as compatible with mag stripe readers. There’s no downside. 

....  except for the mag stripe nonsense.

georgebmac

The problem is that the U.S. is years behind the rest of the developed world in FinTech.  It is still stuck handing cards over and, for many, still on a cash basis.

For myself, if a place fails to accept ApplePay I shop elsewhere (if I can).

As for this scheme:   I don't want anybody reading the mag strip of my card -- whether it's done directly or indirectly through NFC.   That's one of, if not the biggest security advantages of ApplePay:   your card info stays hidden behind ApplePay, nobody but you, your bank, and Apple ever see it.

stompy

Andrew_OSU said:

red oak said:

This reminds me of that start-up that sold car rear view camera systems.    DOA.   Everything will be NFC in 3 - 5 years.   Any window of opportunity is rapidly closing by the day  

This IS NFC as well as compatible with mag stripe readers. There’s no downside. 

The downside is magstripe. Put it out of its (our) misery already.

avon b7

I haven't used a magstripe for many, many, many years and my card never leaves me.

Wherever I am, Wi-Fi based PoS terminals are also available so I can pay from where I am sitting (at a bar, restaurant or whatever) .

Even in my little town on the coast. 

georgebmac

avon b7 said:

I haven't used a magstripe for many, many, many years and my card never leaves me.

Wherever I am, Wi-Fi based PoS terminals are also available so I can pay from where I am sitting (at a bar, restaurant or whatever) .

Even in my little town on the coast. 

Lucky you -- living in a modern, up to date country not using decades old technology.

Funny how the U.S. prides itself on being the world's leader in technology but keeps falling further and further behind the world's developed and developing countries.

Essentially it has substituted technological innovation and advances with political chest thumping.

andrew_osu

red oak said:

OMG.    This thing requires is own non-smartphone hardware device.   Its worse than I thought! 

Smartphones, other than the Samsung models, only work via NFC. This offers compatibility with all readers. 

andrew_osu

mike1 said:

Restaurants are a friction spot for Apple Pay as waiters often still have to take your card to another location to check out. Apple Pay obviously won't work in that scenario and opens up customers to have their card skimmed or number stolen.

Maybe I missed something, but how does this overcome this problem? Still need to give a server your actual card, right?

So you give the server your OV Valet fob instead of your card. It doesn’t store your number so they can’t copy your number and if they have a card skimmer, it will only get a single-use token. Obviously if they stole it it would be an issue of if they charged it twice, but you’d know exactly where that was.

andrew_osu

stompy said:

Andrew_OSU said:

red oak said:

This reminds me of that start-up that sold car rear view camera systems.    DOA.   Everything will be NFC in 3 - 5 years.   Any window of opportunity is rapidly closing by the day  

This IS NFC as well as compatible with mag stripe readers. There’s no downside. 

The downside is magstripe. Put it out of its (our) misery already.

Yeah, but that isn’t going anywhere for a long time. The last number I saw still only around 66% of the US had support for NFC payments. That is woefully small and it is years after EMV readers were required. There are plenty that support those chips but still not NFC.

I’m ALL FOR getting rid of my wallet and storing my ID and all my credit cards in my phone but that not only isn’t in the near future, but not sure it may ever fully be here. There are always going to be those that don’t support NFC or stuck with old readers.

jmstearnsx2

I'm not seeing this as solving any problems.
As a former business owner, I know that the magstrip tech is really old, and there was a law passed that makes it the shop's responsibility if a customer pays with a forged card using the magstrip. This is to encourage the use of NFC & chip. The fact that the magstrip is being phased out as someone mentioned above, and this device doesn't have a chip to read, makes this not a solution, but one more thing that will be unused in a few years. A lot of vendors have upgraded their terminals to contactless due to covid, that and the law about magstrips makes it unlikely it will stay around for much longer. Already a store has disabled the magstrip where I live, chip or NFC only. 

Why carry something when it's duplicate tech (NFC) that I can have built into my phone? That and the fact this is a Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaign makes this a non-starter for me.

dewme

GeorgeBMac said:

The problem is that the U.S. is years behind the rest of the developed world in FinTech.  It is still stuck handing cards over and, for many, still on a cash basis.

For myself, if a place fails to accept ApplePay I shop elsewhere (if I can).

As for this scheme:   I don't want anybody reading the mag strip of my card -- whether it's done directly or indirectly through NFC.   That's one of, if not the biggest security advantages of ApplePay:   your card info stays hidden behind ApplePay, nobody but you, your bank, and Apple ever see it.

Agreed, I'd say the US is at least a decade behind Europe and Asia, which gives this company a small window of opportunity to ride a slowly closing niche market for a little while. It's definitely not something worth the attention of a big player in the mobile payment space, but for a smaller player it could be a decent way to make a living. 

beats

I have a friend who HATES Apple and used to shit on Steve Jobs back in the day.

Like an idiot he proudly used SamsungPay at TARGET! And the cashier said "wow didn't know you could do that" and he said "Yup, SamsungPay" and she said "is that like ApplePay"?

LOL