Samsung Pay aims to do what other wireless payment platforms can’t
During the announcement event for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, the South Korean giant introduced a new payment platform to take on Apple and Google.
It’s called Samsung Pay — based on the recently acquired LoopPay — and it will use the NFC + Magnetic Secure Transmission chips found inside the company’s latest smartphones to facilitate wireless transactions with a great deal of pre-existing point-of-sale terminals. Samsung’s chip will allow their payment service to be compatible with more merchants and banking institutions than any other single service. Here are just a few of the partners they’ve gotten on board on the banking side:
- Visa
- Mastercard
- American Express
- Bank of America
- Citi
- Chase
- U.S. Bank
Not too shabby a list there.
They’ve taken a lot of pride in the strides made in areas of security, as well. The company has incorporated new elements into Samsung KNOX that will serve as the backbone of the secure payment platform.
The use of temporary tokens makes it so that your hard credit card information is not mishandled by whichever merchants you do business with, and your information doesn’t get saved to your device which would make it hard for any thieving no-gooders to somehow snag your credit card information from your phone.
It all sounds very promising, but we’ll have to wait until the service launches before seeing just how much potential Samsung has to impact the wireless payments scene.
The first markets to receive it will be South Korea and the United States this summer, with Samsung looking to extend into parts of Asia and EU before too long. Anyone with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge will be able to give it a go once it hits their market.