Say hello to Samsung Wallet, introduced this morning by the company during a developer conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Wallet, like Apple’s Passbook, of which it seems to borrow a few design cues will store event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards and coupons all in one centralized location. Wallet also features time and location-based push notifications, which is again eerily similar to Apple’s Passbook used to notify users when they can use Wallet cards stored in their account.

Third-party developers will have the opportunity to integrate Wallet allowing uses to add new passes and tickets, but Samsung has to approve all new apps. Passes stored within the app contain bar codes that can be scanned at payment terminals. Interestingly enough, Wallet doesn’t feature NFC capabilities, something Samsung will leave to folks like Visa with their new partnership with the Credit giant. As it stands now, Samsung has partnered with some of the usual suspects including Walgreens, Major League Baseball, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Lufthansa for the launch.

Wallet is only available as a preview for developers right now, with the SDK and API guides to along with it. Upon availability, the app itself will be available in Samsung’s own app store. All expectations are for Samsung to make Wallet a big part of their March 14th Galaxy S IV launch as well the announcement of more partners.

The Verge