One of the lesser-known companies in mobile payments just got a major boost. Way back in August 2013, I was having a conversation with Chris Gardner, co-founder of Boston-based Paydiant, a company most people have never heard of. At the time, Paydiant had just completed a deal for Discover Financial Services to market its mobile wallet platform to 6,000 financial institution customers, which I wrote about here at the time.

Though hardly a surprise, Samsung introduced its own mobile payment system at the Mobile World Congress yesterday. Samsung Pay will be included in the Samsung Galaxy S 6, thanks to the recent acquisition of Boston-based LoopPay. Not long after the LoopPay acquisition, Google purchased the technological assets of Softcard, the doomed joint venture of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, to get Google Wallet back onto the phones that ride along those carriers.