Is Samsung About to Partner With This Crypto Startup?

It’s funny what business leaders can and can’t tell the press.

Cointelegraph caught up with Alexander Drummond, co-founder of crypto-enabled payments company GatePay, at the 50th edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. Drummond was one of several crypto entrepreneurs presenting his company on stage at the CV Labs event on Tuesday.

Drummond’s pitch for GatePay goes something like this: retail customers should be able to pay for products with any means of exchange they want, and retail stores should be able to handle it. Offering checkout support for different credit cards and popular cryptocurrencies, GatePay is a piece of software that point-of-sale distributors push to their merchants’ checkout systems to support all kinds of credit cards and cryptocurrencies.

Merchants designate their banking details and receive all their revenue — from Mastercard swipes to BTC transactions — as conventional bank deposits. Merchants get cash, not crypto, and this is what a vast majority of merchants want at the end of the day.

“If i want to pay with Bitcoin, i choose that option and scan a QR code or tap my phone via NFC,” Drummond explained. “It’s really the same as if you were using ApplePay or another non-credit-based payment rail.”

When we asked Drummond what the future held for GatePay, he let loose an interesting tidbit:

“We’re about to partner with the largest or second-largest payment network in the world. If people have a typical Android phone, they’re likely already tied into this ecosystem. I can only tell you that we’re close to announcing a collaboration with Korea’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer.”

Drummond specifically did not say “Samsung,” but that is indeed Korea’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer, and it has an associated payment network called Samsung Pay that’s compatible with a wide variety of Android phones. If and when GatePay can make the formal announcement that the collaboration is finalized, it would represent a major momentum boost for this crypto startup.

But we’re still waiting for that formal announcement.

Samsung did not immediately reply to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.