Samsung has just announced its new Wallet mobile payment app at the Mobile World Congress and… and it looks a hell of a lot like Apple’s Passbook.
By now you know the drill: the app lets users store things like event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards and coupons in one central location on their phone. There are also time and location-based push notifications that let users know about offers and updates, and users can display barcodes to scan at payment desks. If all of that reminds you of Passbook.. that’s because they’re all passbook features.
Intriguingly, Wallet doesn’t have any NFC capabilities; instead, that will be left to folks like Visa, which Samsung has just partnered with, and will produce third-party apps. Indeed, you can expect the number of partners for the app generally — currently including Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Lufthansa — to increase rapidly in time for the forthcoming March 14 launch of the Samsung Galaxy S IV.
The app is currently only available as a developers’ preview, but it will roll out to the public in the “near future”. [The Verge]