Initially intended for launch in July, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has delayed the launch of Samsung Pay, the South Korean smartphone maker’s mobile payment service, until September.

Speaking to investors on Wednesday, Samsung Executive Vice President Rhee In Jong said that Samsung Pay will launch in the U.S. and South Korea alongside the company’s next-generation high-end smartphone. (via Bloomberg)

The company recently launched its flagship Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones, which both already support Samsung Pay.

Samsung is the latest in a slew of technology companies, including Google, Apple and PayPal, looking to secure its share of the growing mobile payments market. The market, currently at $50 billion, is set to reach $142 billion by 2019, the New York Times cited from a report from Forrester Research.

Claire Kim, a Seoul-based analyst at Daishin Securities Co. told Bloomberg that, “The new service [Samsung Pay] will likely be deployed on its next Galaxy Note device.”

She added that the key to Samsung Pay’s success is how fast the company can make its mobile payments service available on lower-end Samsung smartphones.

Rhee told investors that Samsung Pay will be available in additional markets, including Europe, China, Australia and South America, later this year – presumably following the U.S. and South Korea launch. He added that the service will be made available on other (lower-end) Samsung smartphones.

Samsung, in partnership with Visa and MasterCard, announced Samsung Pay alongside its latest flagship smartphones in March. Thanks to technology it acquired when it bought LoopPay Inc., the service offers both NFC-capability for tap-to-pay transactions, and support for magnetic card readers via HCE, making it compatible with 90 percent of existing point-of-sale (POS) terminals in the United States.

Given its delayed roll out, Samsung seemingly has ambitious goals for Samsung Pay. According to Rhee, Samsung hopes to have 15 to 20 percent of its smartphone user base use its mobile payments service from the get go.

News of the delay comes on the heels of Google’s announcement of Android Pay; a platform that enables mobile payments in third-party Android apps. Google said its service can be used in 700,000 locations in the U.S. alone.

Samsung is also falling further behind rival Apple’s mobile payments service, Apple Pay. Apple Pay is now supported by over 2,500 financial institutions in the U.S. and the service is expected to launch in Canada later this year.

Image credit: Maurizio Pesce, Flickr, CC BY 2.0