Samsung, the South Korean tech giant who boasts of a significant global market share in the smartphone business has announced a new turnkey security solution chip meant to secure crypto transactions on mobile phones.

The new chip comprises of Secure Element (SE) chip (S3FV9RR) and security software to facilitate secure storage and transactions of crypto payments.

The security chip comes with Common Criteria (CC) EAL 6+ certification which is considered among the most robust security standards primarily used for devices and applications with the highest requirement of security standards like hardware crypto wallets.

The security chip’s biggest advantage is that it can work independent of the mobile device, so even in case the device has been hacked, the chip would keep the assets secure and out of the reach of the scammers. Dongho Shin, senior vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics commented on this:

“In this era of mobility and contact-less interactions, we expect our connected devices, such as smartphones or tablets, to be highly secure so as to protect personal data and enable fintech activities such as mobile banking, stock trading and cryptocurrency transactions. With the new standalone security element solution (S3FV9RR), Samsung is mounting a powerful deadbolt on smart devices to safeguard private information.”

As the popularity and use of crypto assets are growing with each passing year, mobile manufacturers have found a keen interest in this nascent market. Samsung started offering crypto wallet support in its flagship Galaxy devices from the past two years and now have decided to introduce a stand-alone SE security chip which meets the highest security standards.

Similarly, HTC is another mobile manufacturer that has gone one step ahead and introduced blockchain centric mobile devices with the capability to run a full node and even mine cryptocurrencies.

The SE security chip is expected to hit the market by the third quarter of 2020, and the announcement made specific mention of crypto transactions security for a key use case for the highly secure S3FV9RR chip.

Samsung’s interest in decentralized tech and cryptocurrencies is not just limited to offering crypto wallet support and secure crypto transactions, in fact, the tech giants have made several investments in DLT-based startups.

The latest being the partnership between Samsung Pay and Crypto Visa Card platform Swipe which would enable cryptocurrency payments to be made using mobile devices by Samsung Pay users.

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