Izvestia: the dispute between Samsung and Sqwin AG threatens the development of payment services in Russia (RATEK) warned that a patent dispute between Samsung and Sqwin AG could become an obstacle to the development of the domestic payment market. Izvestia writes about this on Friday, December 3.
As the newspaper writes, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) appealed to the Central Bank and Rospatent with a request to intervene in the situation between Samsung and the Swiss Sqwin AG, which considers that Samsung Pay's contactless payment technology is illegally exploiting its patent. The representative of RATEK Anton Guskov pointed out that this threatens to ban access to the Russian market for cashless technologies not only for a particular brand, but for the technology itself as a whole.
Business representatives note that since 2017 Samsung has been a partner National Payment Card System (NSPK) and provides the ability to connect Mir cards to the Samsung Pay service. If Samsung Pay is suspended, new payment services and services, as well as cooperation with the Mir system, may be postponed indefinitely, which will limit the possibilities for its further technological development.
In October, the Arbitration Court Moscow banned the Korean company Samsung Electronics and its Russian subsidiary from importing into Russia, offering for sale and selling 61 models of smartphones, including the newest Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, due to a patent dispute between Sqwin SA, which opposed the use of the Samsung payment service in Russia Pay. According to the company, the service violates its right to an invention protected by a Russian patent, the Electronic Payment System.