Tech giant integrates USDC and native payments into wallet across 61 countries

Samsung is adding native stablecoin features to 800 million new Galaxy smartphones, positioning the company as a potential major distributor of digital currencies like USDC, according to industry analysts.

The integration includes fiat-pegged savings and payments accounts within Samsung Wallet, available across 61 countries. Lee Dinham, smartphone specialist product manager at Samsung, said the move will “make Samsung one of the first major mobile phone brands to offer native stablecoins on smartphones, enabling fast and reliable transfer of digital value.”

Samsung Wallet already has 19 million users in South Korea and supports storage of bitcoin, ether, and tron alongside connections to external hardware wallets like Ledger’s Nano S and Nano X. The wallet launched in 2019 through Knox, a hardware-isolated vault secured with fingerprint or PIN access.

Joseph Goh, director and head of Asia Pacific at Areta, told CoinDesk that “distribution is the scarce asset here, and Samsung owns a great deal of it.” He added that “due to this strategic move, Samsung will emerge as a dominant distributor of stablecoins such as USDC.”

The wallet announcement aligns with Samsung’s infrastructure investments. In May 2026, three Samsung affiliates (Samsung Securities, Samsung SDS, and Samsung Card) acquired a 4% stake in Dunamu, operator of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, for $408 million. Samsung SDS CEO Lee Jun-hee characterized the stake as a strategic investment to enter the digital asset infrastructure business, including stablecoins and AI-powered payments.

Ben Nadareski, CEO and co-founder of Solstice, framed the dual strategy as addressing a longstanding gap in crypto adoption. “The broader picture is distribution catching up to liquidity,” he said. “For years, crypto had deep venues in places like South Korea and weak paths into daily spend. Samsung Wallet points the other way: stablecoins inside a hub people open for cards and checkout.”

Goh emphasized the timing. “Their goal is to be positioned in both dollar and won stablecoins while Korea’s framework is still being discussed. The timing is deliberate,” he said. South Korea unveiled a draft Digital Asset Basic Act in April 2026 that would establish groundwork for digital asset trading, custody, supervision, and stablecoin issuance.

Lee Dinham stated that Samsung Wallet will become “the foundation for an interconnected financial ecosystem across Galaxy devices and services, where it combines payments, rewards, and digital assets into a single unified experience.”

Over one billion active Samsung smartphones exist worldwide. Robby Yung, CEO of Investments at Animoca Brands (in which Samsung is an investor), acknowledged that “distribution has always been a major challenge for digital assets, given the closed nature of mobile ecosystems,” though he expressed uncertainty about whether Samsung’s advantage extends beyond traditional competitors like Apple and Google.