Samsung is bringing stablecoins into the fold of everyday phone use.
At its Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, the company announced that Samsung Wallet—the app already used to store payment cards, IDs, hotel keys and boarding passes—will add native support for stablecoins. Samsung gave few concrete details: there’s no launch date, no named issuer and no disclosure of which blockchain(s) the tokens will run on. Still, the move signals a significant step toward mainstream crypto integration on consumer hardware.
“Samsung Wallet will expand beyond cash and savings. It will embrace new forms of digital value, including stablecoins,” said Lee Dinham, Samsung’s product manager, on stage. He framed the capability as enabling “fast and trusted digital value transfers,” and positioned Samsung as among the first major smartphone brands to offer native stablecoins on a handset.
Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to maintain a steady value—typically pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar—by being backed with cash or short-term government debt. Samsung’s presentation included a mockup showing Circle’s USDC (the market’s second-largest stablecoin), though the company did not confirm Circle as a partner.
One crucial detail remains unresolved: Samsung has not said whether the Wallet’s stablecoin feature will be custodial (funds held by Samsung or a third party) or non-custodial (users control their private keys). That distinction will matter for security, custody risk and regulatory exposure.
This isn’t Samsung’s first foray into crypto. Since 2019 the company has included a hardware-isolated vault—Knox—on Galaxy phones, accessible by PIN or fingerprint, and has supported Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and Stellar. In 2021 Samsung enabled linking hardware wallets like Ledger Nano S to that secure vault. And last October the company expanded a deal with Coinbase to let 75 million U.S. Galaxy owners buy crypto directly inside Samsung Wallet—a partnership Samsung called a trusted in-app route for crypto purchases. “Samsung Wallet is a trusted tool to millions of Galaxy users,” said Drew Blackard, Samsung’s SVP of mobile product management.
The stablecoin announcement came alongside Samsung’s U.S. launch of the Galaxy Card—its first U.S. credit card—issued by Barclays on the Visa network, offering 5% back on Samsung purchases and 3% back on Samsung Wallet transactions. Visa’s Kirk Stuart described the card as reflecting how “consumers expect payments to be embedded into the digital experiences they use every day.” Samsung framed the combined initiative as delivering a “secured payments and rewards experience.”
What’s next: Samsung has laid the groundwork with hardware security and existing crypto integrations, but the biggest questions—custody, partners, chain choice and timing—remain open. If Samsung follows through, native stablecoin support in a major smartphone ecosystem could accelerate consumer use of digital dollar-like tokens and deepen the overlap between traditional payments and crypto rails.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
