Samsung Brings Solana-based USDC to Wallets on 82 Million Galaxy Phones in the US.

Sending money overseas from your phone, with no crypto knowledge required: that's the pitch behind a new Samsung Wallet feature announced on Thursday, October 8, 2026. From the last week of October, eligible Galaxy users in the United States will be able to send the USDC stablecoin across borders straight from Samsung Wallet or Samsung Pay. Samsung says the feature could reach roughly 82 million devices.

There's no separate crypto app to download. Everything lives inside the wallet people already carry. A user converts fiat into USDC, sends it to a compatible external wallet, and the recipient can convert it back into regular currency. Solana and Sui handle the work in the background, so nobody has to manage private keys or learn how a blockchain works. There are some conditions, though: the device has to meet certain requirements, and users must pass identity verification first.

On costs, Samsung says it charges nothing for USDC transfers. The catch is that the receiving wallet or exchange may add its own fees, and speed depends on how busy the network is. Users can also send money directly to bank accounts in more than 60 countries, where recipients get local currency. Fees for that route differ by destination. Several big names sit behind the scenes. Bastion, a licensed stablecoin infrastructure and custody provider, runs the payment framework, and Coinbase acts as the official sub-custodian, with USDC in Samsung Wallet secured through Coinbase Prime. The two companies have worked together for a while. Samsung Pay added Coinbase support in July 2025, and an expanded partnership followed in October 2025 that brought Coinbase into Galaxy wallets in the US. Samsung calls this launch the next chapter of that relationship.

The executives, unsurprisingly, are upbeat. Woncheol Chai, EVP and head of Samsung Electronics' digital wallet team, said sending money abroad should feel as simple as opening the wallet already on your phone. Alec Lovett of Coinbase called it a major distribution milestone for USDC, given Samsung's global reach. Solana Foundation President Lily Liu went further, saying this is when stable coins stop being seen as a crypto product and start being treated as an ordinary way to move money.

The numbers back up some of that momentum. Solana Foundation data cited by U. Today shows stablecoin supply on the network up nearly 20 percent over the past 12 months, and stablecoin transaction volume on Solana has passed US$5.25 trillion so far in 2026. Samsung isn't new to blockchain either. It launched the Samsung Blockchain Keystone alongside the Galaxy S10 in 2019 to store crypto private keys on the phone and, two years later, raddled support for Ledger Nano S and Nano X hardware wallets.

Still, the 82 million figure deserves a grain of salt. TradingView points out that it describes how far the integration reaches, not how many people are actually making payments. The announcement doesn't say how many users will try theservice orr what it might do to Solana network fees. For now it's live only in the US, with expansion to other markets planned as local regulations allow.

References

The Block: Samsung to launch USDC transfers on Solana for US Galaxy users, https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-10-07-samsung-to-launch-usdc-transfers-on-solana-for-us-galaxy-users-418004

TokenPost: Samsung Will Add USDC Transfers to 82 Million U.S. Galaxy Phones, https://www.tokenpost.com/news/business/27791

U.Today: Samsung Brings Solana to 82 Million Phones,https://u.today/samsung-brings-solana-to-82-million-phones

TradingView/CoinMarketCal: Solana: Samsung brings cross-border USDC payments to Galaxy devices, https://www.tradingview.com/news/coinmarketcal:43aecade8094b:0-solana-samsung-brings-cross-border-usdc-payments-to-galaxy-devices-08-oct-2026/