Samsung Wallet Going Full Stablecoin: $USDC, Cross-Border And In-Store Payments By Year-End 🪙

Samsung Electronics will begin rolling out stablecoin accounts, cross-border remittance and in-store payments inside Samsung Wallet this year, starting in a limited group of countries, the company told Sandmark in a written response on 8 Aug. The reply, translated from Korean, is the first time Samsung has attached a timeline to the stablecoin plan it outlined at Galaxy Unpacked in London on 22 Jul. Stablecoins are tokens designed to hold a fixed value, almost always one U.S. dollar, and are used mainly to move money rather than to bet on its price.

Samsung Wallet, the group's single app for payment cards, IDs, digital keys and boarding passes, operates in 61 countries and has more than 19 million monthly active users in South Korea alone, according to market tracker Wiseapp Retail Goods. Samsung shipped 241.2 million smartphones worldwide in 2025, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a U.S. market research firm that tracks technology shipments and market share. A Samsung spokesperson said: "Starting with select countries within this year, we plan to sequentially introduce stablecoin account opening, cross-border remittance and payment functions inside Samsung Wallet. Global expansion will proceed at an appropriate time after closely reviewing each country's regulations and market environment."

Galaxy Unpacked is Samsung's twice-yearly product showcase, where it introduces new smartphones, wearables and related services. The Unpacked presentation showed a Samsung Wallet mockup holding 1,500 USD Coin ($USDC) alongside Send, Receive and Top-up buttons. Samsung Blockchain Wallet, released in 2019 and protected by Samsung Knox, which keeps private keys in an isolated area of the phone's hardware, ships on Galaxy devices in markets including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines, according to Samsung's developer documentation. That app is non-custodial, meaning the user holds the keys and Samsung cannot touch the funds, and it supports Bitcoin ($BTC), Ether ($ETH) and Tron ($TRX), so $USDC issued on Ethereum and Tether ($USDT) issued on Tron can already be held and sent by users who add the tokens by hand.

Samsung's tie-up with U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase also lets U.S. Galaxy owners see their Coinbase balances inside Samsung Wallet and fund purchases on the exchange through Samsung Pay, Samsung's contactless payment service. The new functions add an account-opening flow, cross-border remittance and in-store payments through Samsung Wallet, features the current app does not offer. Account opening requires identity and anti-money-laundering checks known as know-your-customer (KYC), and cross-border remittance — the business of sending money abroad, typically by workers to family at home — is almost always handled by a licensed operator under local rules.