Samsung is expanding its digital payments platform, Samsung Pay, with a debit card later this summer. The South Korean phone maker, in a blog post, said it’s collaborating with San Francisco, California-based personal finance company SoFi to launch “an innovative debit card backed by a cash management account.”
To accompany a debit card, Samsung is also developing a “mobile-first money management platform.” While the company didn’t share much on this service, it will likely plug into the Samsung debit card and the rest of the linked accounts on Samsung Pay to let you manage all of them from a central dashboard. Plus, it could potentially augment Samsung Pay’s existing supplementary services such as the rewards program where users can earn points with each transaction and the cashback system for online shopping.
“Our vision is to help consumers better manage their money so that they can achieve their dreams and goals. Now more than ever, mobile financial services and money management tools will play an even bigger role in our daily lives while also opening up new possibilities,” added Sang Ahn, Vice President and GM of Samsung Pay in North America.
Samsung Pay was launched about five years ago and is one of the most widely accepted digital payments platforms. The platform relies on its built-in magnetic secure transmission technology (MST) that allows your phone to mimic a traditional credit or debit card, letting you pay with it just about anywhere.
It’s worth noting that Samsung hasn’t yet explicitly said the debit card will be available in a physical form. It’s quite possible it will be a virtual debit card of sorts that will work exclusively through the Samsung Pay app. If so, however, that could severely restrict the card’s sales since the MST chip is only found on midrange and premium Samsung phones.
Of late, tech companies have been actively investing in financial services that leverage their platforms’ vast reach. A year ago, Apple announced its own Goldman Sachs-branded credit card. Google is also rumored to be planning to roll out a physical debit card in partnership with various banks including CITI and Stanford Federal Credit Union.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.
Apple's first foldable phone is now on shelves, in short supply, but with an unreal amount of buzz around it. After all, it's the first foldable iPhone, and there's plenty that this phone gets right. But there's also a lot that is either broken or underwhelming. What's peculiar is the dialogue around this phone, and how it has completely overshadowed every other attempt at making a phone with a similar form factor.
I've spent some time with the iPhone Duo, and I've used the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for almost three months now. In my opinion, Samsung deserves more credit. When the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrived earlier this year, it was celebrated in some circles and ridiculed in others for supposedly copying what Apple would eventually deliver with the iPhone Duo. The dialogue was pretty odd, for multiple reasons. Samsung has been making foldable phones for years, so claiming that it copied a product Apple hadn't even launched was simply absurd.