Top tech firm Samsung Electronics Co. will release new editions of the Galaxy A smartphone series later this month, with updated features including Samsung Pay, the company's mobile payment tool that previously only came with high-end models, the company said Thursday.

The new Galaxy A (2016) series will come in three versions, namely the Galaxy A7, the Galaxy A5, and the Galaxy A3 with 5.5-inch, 5.2-inch and 4.7-inch displays.

The Galaxy A7 and A5 will support Samsung Pay, a mobile payment platform that adopts magnetic secure transmission technology to work on traditional credit card machines. Like rivals Apple Pay and Android Pay, it also supports near field communication that requires a separate transaction device.

The smartphones will come in four colors -- black, white, gold and pink. It will be available around the globe in mid-December.

The Galaxy A series will come with stronger camera-related features, with a "wide selfie" feature that allows users to include more people in pictures, and "palm selfie" making it easier to activate the camera.

The three smartphones all come with 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras, and run on the Android 5.1 Lollipop. With a data capacity of 16GB, users can expand the amount through micro SD slots. (Yonhap)