Samsung Wallet: Store cryptocurrency and personal information including vaccine records

Samsung announced today (Feb 9), at its Unpacked 2022 event, the Samsung Wallet. It can hold personal IDs, including student IDs, driver’s licenses and state IDs, plus digital house or car keys, credit and debit cards, boarding passes and vaccination records. It can also be used to “access and explore complex digital products” such as cryptocurrency.

The wallet allows secure payments, presumably with Samsung Pay. The Samsung Wallet will be supported across all Galaxy S22 series phones. However, it’s not clear if older Galaxy phones will be supported.

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According to a press release, the wallet’s Digital ID feature will be available later this year, with the boarding pass and access ticket features first debuting in South Korea once the product releases.

User information on the Galaxy S22 series is protected by Samsung’s Knox Vault platform, which utilizes its own secure processor and memory. It isolates passwords, Blockchain keys and other sensitive information from the phone’s main operating system to keep it more secure.

Samsung Pay allows users to store the same information — with the exception of cryptocurrency — as well as make secure payments. It remains to be seen if the storing functions will be moved into Samsung Wallet, leaving Samsung Pay to handle the transactions.

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The Samsung Wallet is a new competitor to the Apple Wallet, which allows Apple users to store similar payment information and personal data. However, Apple Wallet does not currently allow users to store cryptocurrency or vaccination records.

Storing vaccination records is convenient, but with some state governments, including Colorado and New York, lifting COVID restrictions and leaving the choice up to individual businesses, it’ll be interesting to see how many users it draws. The cryptocurrency feature sounds enticing; however, Samsung hasn’t released much information about the wallet’s asset management capabilities.