Samsung's budget smartphones to get fingerprint scanner and Samsung Pay

Korea Herald reports that Samsung is planning to integrate two premium features- fingerprint sensors and Samsung Pay in its budget smartphone. 

"Samsung is planning to deploy fingerprint sensors in budget smartphone models," Korea Herald quotes an unnamed industry source. The planned integration would be a considerable upgrade over Samsung's existing product lineup, which offers fingerprint sensors on Galaxy S flagships and Galaxy Note series as well as the Galaxy A series handsets.

One major obstacle in the adoption of fingerprint scanner may be the price, so Samsung will have to devise a cost-effective way to manufacture the budget smartphone, which offers these features. The move is inspired by the company's performance in emerging markets with low-end devices. However, there are no details of launch time-frame as of now.

In addition to featuring fingerprint sensors, Samsung's mid- and  low-end smartphones in the first half of 2016 are also expected to provide access to NFC payment platform- Samsung Pay.

Hwang Min-sung, an analyst from Samsung Securities, forecast that "Samsung would surely install the payment system, which is compatible with both traditional magnetic stripes and Near Field Communication terminals, on its budget models running on Google’s Android operating system"

Samsung Pay may also expand to smartphone running Tizen platform though Min-sung feels that “Tizen smartphones with the mobile payment function would have little impact on the market.”

This shows that Samsung is feeling the heat from Chinese smartphone maker, who integrate premium features including fingerprint scanners in lower-mid-range offerings. For the same price, Chinese brand offers more features than Samsung. 

Xiaomi and OnePlus, watch out, Samsung is coming for you.