Until now, smartphones have not been able to accurately read product barcodes. This is about to change with the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S4 in April 2013.

According to James Wester, writing for selfserviceworld.com: “As expected, the S4 will be the first Samsung device to come pre-loaded with the Visa payWave applet in the embedded secure element. (The SE is where the phone securely stores payment account information.) That means users will have mobile payment capabilities the moment they unbox their devices. They will still have to load payment credentials into the wallet, but the preloaded app eliminates the need to download a mobile wallet application. The problem with traditional barcodes is that when they are rendered on a smartphone, screen glare can prevent a scanner from reading them correctly. Mobeam technology converts the barcode to pulses of light that the scanner interprets as the barcode, thus no issue with glare. Any of the estimated 165 million laser scanners used by retailers around the world can ‘read’ barcodes presented using mobeam.”