Synchrony Financial is actively engaged in the work to allow its cards to run through Samsung Pay, Android Pay and CurrentC, Bank Innovation has learned.

Carol Juel, chief information officer of Synchrony, the nation’s largest private-label credit card issuer, told Bank Innovation today that the Samsung Pay functionality, for example, should be available later this year.

Meanwhile, the first Synchrony client to make Apple Pay available, JCPenney, will go live later this year, too.

Synchrony, based in Stamford, Conn., has a core of about 20 large retailers for which it provides private-label card services. Think Lowe’s, Walmart, Amazon, Ethan Allen and JCPenney. Formed from GE Capital’s private label unit, Synchrony had $61.4 billion of outstanding receivables at the end of last quarter, a 12% increase over the same quarter in 2014.

Because Synchrony owns a bank and a private network, Synchrony cards run on the company’s own payment “rails.” As a result of this private network, Synchrony has to make commercial and technical arrangements with each digital wallet.

The Samsung Pay discussions appear to be close to completion. Synchrony was an investor in the startup that Samsung acquired last February for a reported $250 million to transform into Samsung Pay, LoopPay. Will Graylin, one of the founders of LoopPay, remains close to the Synchrony team, Juel said – he is actually speaking this afternoon at a special event Synchrony is holding for its clients at the New York Stock Exchange today.

Juel, who speaks with the authority and speed of a train station announcer, explained that Synchrony is staying agnostic to the various wallets, in deference to the needs of its clients. “We have to maintain the value proposition of our cards,” she told me.

If the company’s Apple experience is any indicator, Synchrony will be interfacing with the digital wallet providers from both a technical and a commercial standpoint. Last December, after Apple Pay was launched last October, Synchrony began talks with Apple to have Apple Pay provisioned for Synchrony’s private network — its cards don’t start with a 3, 4 or 5, after all. Juel said she “spent a lot of time in Cupertino” earlier this year doing what she called “gap assessments.” Synchrony had to educate Apple executives on private label and its private network, while Synchrony needed to more fully get under the hood of Apple Pay.

The result was both a technical and commercial agreement between Apple and Synchrony, terms of which are not public. But it appeared from talking to Juel today that the negotiations between Apple and Synchrony were not insignificant.

All this work at Synchrony is part of a significant dedication to innovation that started a few years ago. Synchrony maintains several innovation labs, which it calls Innovation Stations – the next one will be launched in Chicago soon and will concentrate on data, as in how to use Hadoop to create new data services, for example.

In addition to the successful LoopPay investment, Synchrony owns a stake in GPShopper, a New York-based startup that builds mobile apps for retailers. Juel said Synchrony is open to making more investments in startups, or pursuing partnerships that don’t necessarily include equity. But she said Synchrony does not have a specific target number or dollar amount for either.

As for the future, Juel sees digital payments centering very much on the hardware providers.

“Two years ago, no one predicted that the handset provider would drive the space,” she said. “But the device you carry will determine how you pay. The wallet you have will be dependant on the device you have.”

Which is why Synchrony is betting on all the wallets, not just Apple Pay.