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The payments space is heating up with Apple Pay making major inroads, while Google Wallet and Samsung Pay are growing rapidly as well. The ability to store all of one’s payment information in a secure online wallet is certainly appealing to many individuals. With that said, the competition is fierce and billions of dollars will be spent over the next year as each company tries to outdo one another to win over new users.

For Samsung, an early leader within the smartphone-powered virtual reality space, the next frontier within the payment space may be within virtual reality worlds themselves. In an effort to leverage their early lead within the VR space, the company now says that they plan to look into offering their Samsung Pay services within VR applications and games.

“Some conversations we have been hearing about is how great would it be if you could enter a store with your VR headset and you browse the store in VR. You can click and pick what you want. I would like to be the payment mechanism behind that,” stated Nathalie Oestmann, head of Samsung Pay Europe.

While nothing is set in stone quite yet, Samsung may in fact be onto something big. As retail stores begin looking towards virtual reality as a new way to market their products online, a quick and easy payment gateway within these VR worlds could really become appealing to developers and users alike. Who wants to fumble around entering a credit card number, expiration date and other personal information when they have a VR headset attached to their face? It would be nearly impossible to purchase an item within a virtual reality store if such a process was required. Imagine entering a VR store, viewing products in a full 360-degree immersive environment, selecting the products you’d like to purchase, and quickly supplying your payment information via a simple Samsung Pay interface. VR shopping would actually make sense then, right?

Apple, Google and other smartphone manufacturers likely have plans to enter the VR space, but Samsung has to it’s advantage a decent head start. Whether they will take advantage of this head start in time to make an impactful difference within the payments space is yet to be seen, but it appears as if they are headed in the right direction.

Let us know your thoughts on virtual reality shopping in the Samsung Pay VR forum on VRTalk.com.