Alongwith Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung also announced mobile payment service, Samsung Pay wich will be accepted at more merchant locations than competing offerings. This service of Samsung has direct competition with Apple’s payment service.
According to Samsung, ”to date, mobile wallets have had extremely low acceptance with merchants utilizing conventional magstripe terminals. With Samsung Pay, consumers can now utilize their mobile devices to pay at existing point-of-sale terminals. To achieve this, Samsung leverages both Near Field Communication (NFC) and a new proprietary technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) to make mobile payments more accessible to merchants and consumers than ever before”. , In other words, the merchants would not require to have different terminals to accept payments via Samsung Pay and their existing termianls would be fine to accept this service. In the case of Apple payment service, the separate terminal is required.
Samsung Pay service will initially be available in the United States and Korea this coming summer and expand to other regions, including Europe and China with Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.
To make this service successful and global acceptance, Samsung has partnered with major payment networks such as MasterCard and Visa. Samsung is also in the process of expanding this service with key financial partners globally, including American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank, to provide greater flexibility, access, and choice for customers while enabling a simple and secure payment experience.
According to South Korean giant, ”Samsung Pay has the potential of being accepted at approximately 30 million merchant locations worldwide, making it the only mobile payment solution with near universal acceptance. Samsung offers this capability by deploying a groundbreaking technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). Consumers can use Samsung Pay in merchant locations regardless of whether the terminals support NFC or traditional magstripe, which is the vast majority of existing terminals”.
With Samsung Pay, consumers will benefit from a simple and easy-to-use application leading to a positive consumer experience. Adding a card requires a few simple steps. Once added, the user simply swipes up from the bezel to invoke the Samsung Pay app, chooses the desired payment card, and authenticates with the fingerprint sensor. Tapping the device to the point-of-sale (POS) terminals allows for a fast, secure, and easy purchase, says Samsung in its press statement.
Samsung has further added that it is deeply committed to upholding security and user data privacy to the highest industry standards. Samsung Pay does not keep personal account numbers on a consumer’s device. In addition, Samsung Pay provides many security features that make it safer than a physical card. When combined with tokenization – replacing sensitive card data with a unique, secure token to prevent fraud – Samsung Pay will deliver secure mobile payments worldwide.
