Samsung launched its own payment service in Germany on Thursday. After a four-week beta phase, Samsung Pay is now available in Samsung’s Galaxy Store and Google’s Play Store. The payment service works on numerous younger Galaxy smartphones that the South Korean manufacturer brought onto the market from 2018 and can be linked to “almost any bank account”.

The payment process in the store works as you know it from the Google or Apple processes. Under the hood, however, Samsung Pay differs from the well-known wallet applications in which you can store your own credit card. For Samsung Pay, Samsung issues its own virtual Visa card that can be linked to any German checking account. Own cards cannot be used. When activating, 5 cents will be withdrawn from the account, which will be refunded a few days later.

Technology from Solarisbank In Germany, Samsung works with Visa for this and the Berlin fintech startup Solarisbank. The company has a German full banking license and employs more than 300 employees. Solarisbank offers “Banking as a Service” on its platform for corporate customers who, for example, want to market accounts or credit cards under their own brand. Using APIs, customers can integrate Solarisbank’s modular products directly into their own offering. The end customer’s data remains with Samsung, Solarisbank is a pure service provider.

Thanks to this collaboration, Samsung Pay can be used in this country without your own credit card. Solarisbank issues a virtual Visa debit card that can be linked to almost any checking account with a German IBAN. The prerequisite is that the user is of legal age and the sole account holder and that it is not a business or savings account. The account must be activated for online banking and support two-factor authentication.

When connecting to an account, Solarisbank checks the identity and creditworthiness of the account holder; however, a video identification procedure to prove identity is not necessary. The Schufa checks whether the account is known there. According to the provider, this pure query has no influence on the score or the creditworthiness of the customer and is deleted after 12 months. Depending on the result of the credit check, Solarisbank grants a credit limit of up to 1000 euros for the card; if the creditworthiness is insufficient, there is a prepaid debit card.

Schufa entry? Depending on creditworthiness, both card variants are also available with or without an additional credit limit for installment payments. Solarisbank and Samsung Pay call this “Splitpay”. For this purpose, the user is granted an additional credit limit of up to 8000 euros for installment payments and registered with Schufa, depending on their creditworthiness. Amounts from 100 Euro can then be paid in three to 24 monthly installments. Which card variant the user receives is automatically decided on the basis of the credit check. The user himself has no choice.

During the beta phase of the past four weeks, a Schufa entry for issuing the debit card was made, but that has now been changed, said a Solarisbank spokesman opposite heise online. With Schufa, only the splitpay credit limit will be deposited with immediate effect. However, this has no direct impact on the base score.

The institution and the Schufa entry de