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Samsung announces Wallet to rival Apple's Passbook

Samsung announces Wallet to rival Apple's Passbook

By Anupam Saxena | Updated: 27 February 2013 18:57 IST

Taking a page from Apple's Passbook app, Samsung has announced a ticket and coupon management app called Samsung Wallet. The solution will allow users to store and manage event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards and coupons in one place.

The South Korean mobile giant made the app public at its Developer Day at the Mobile World Congress. Samsung has also released an API (Application Programming Interface) for the wallet through which Samsung's partners can integrate their apps with the Samsung Wallet so that they can add their tickets and coupons to the Wallet. As per Samsung's website, the API is open to selected partners at the moment and will be made public in May 2013. However, developers will be able to start using the Samsung Wallet APIs starting 7 March 2013.

The wallet also features time and location based push notifications, similar to Apple's Passbook, alerting users about the partner's relevant coupons and tickets, enabling increased access to Samsung partner's apps, in addition to offering real-time updates on membership card points and changes to boarding passes. Samsung will also allow partners to market product coupons through the solution. Samsung also announced partners including Walgreens, Belly, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Lufthansa.

Samsung is all set to launch its new Galaxy SIV smartphone on March 14 in New York. It looks like Samsung Wallet will be one of the phone's major features. Last year, Samsung had filed a patent for Samsung Wallet with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

While third party apps such as Tripit also offer similar functionality, integrating a mobile wallet will allow Samsung to leverage its relationship with partners and offer extended functionality to end users.

MWC 2013 in pictures

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