Samsung’s Wallet Gets a Credit Line: Barclays Backs New US Card

In Short — Key Takeaways

• Samsung Electronics has launched its first-ever co-branded credit card in the US, issued by Barclays US Consumer Bank on the Visa network.
• General public applications for the Samsung Galaxy Card opened on July 22, 2026, offering 5% cashback on Samsung purchases and rewards on other spending categories.
• The card integrates with Samsung Wallet and is secured through the on-device Samsung Knox security platform.
• The deal extends a run of US expansion moves by Barclays, including its GM card issuance, the Gap-branded Encore card, and its $800 million acquisition of lender Best Egg.

Samsung Electronics has entered the US credit card market for the first time, partnering with Barclays US Consumer Bank to launch the Samsung Galaxy Card. Applications opened to the general public on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, with the card running on the Visa network and built directly into the Samsung Wallet app. The move ties a major consumer electronics brand’s ecosystem more tightly to everyday spending, at a moment when hardware makers and banks are increasingly experimenting with embedded financial products.

What the card offers

The Samsung Galaxy Card gives users 5% cashback on purchases made directly with Samsung, alongside tiered rewards for spending in other categories. Cardholders can choose between a virtual card for digital use and a premium metal physical card. Transactions and account data are protected using Samsung’s on-device Knox security platform, which the company already uses to secure its phones and wearables. By folding the card into Samsung Wallet, the company is positioning the product less as a standalone credit line and more as another layer of its broader device and services ecosystem — following a pattern already familiar from Apple Card’s integration with Apple Wallet.

Sih Lee, EVP and head of Samsung Electronics’ fintech business in North America, framed the launch as an opening step rather than a finished product, saying on LinkedIn that the company was “just getting started” in pushing further into digital finance. That phrasing suggests Samsung may look to expand its financial services offering beyond a single card in the coming years, echoing how other tech hardware firms have gradually layered banking, payments, and insurance products onto their existing platforms.

Barclays’ broader US push

For Barclays, the Samsung partnership is the latest in a string of moves to grow its footprint in the competitive US consumer banking market. Earlier this year, Barclays replaced Goldman Sachs as the exclusive issuer of General Motors’ credit card programme, a significant win in the auto-affinity card space. It also partnered with longtime travel client JetBlue on a premium card launched in January 2025, and teamed up with retailer Gap in February to deliver the Encore card and rewards programme.

Sitting between those deals, Barclays US Consumer Bank agreed to acquire Best Egg, a Delaware-based personal loan platform, in a transaction valued at $800 million that closed in May 2026. To support the deposit growth generated by this expanding roster of partnerships, Barclays has also extended its agreement with FIS to run its Profile core banking platform. Taken together, the moves show a bank building out both the product side (co-branded cards, lending) and the infrastructure side (core banking software) of its US retail operation simultaneously.

What comes next

The launch adds Samsung to a small but growing list of consumer technology companies issuing their own credit products in the US, a space where device-level security features and app-based account management are increasingly used as differentiators against traditional bank-issued cards. For Barclays, the deal reinforces a strategy of using co-branded partnerships to acquire US deposits and transaction volume without building a retail branch network from scratch. Whether Samsung expands further into lending, savings, or other financial products — as Lee’s comments hinted — will likely depend on how the Galaxy Card performs with US consumers over its first year, and on how competitors like Apple and Google respond in the same space.