Put your wallet away - Samsung Pay is nearly ready for prime time
The world of mobile payments is still trying to find its feet, and with Apple Pay set for further expansion over the next few months, Samsung Pay looks set to join its Cupertino-made rival in the near future. The last we heard, Sammy was planning to roll the feature out to the United States and Korea in the second half of 2015, and according to BusinessKorea, is on schedule to drop in September.
At present, Samsung is running tests with eight domestic card companies in order to smooth out kinks within the system. The tech deployed to send info to card readers -- Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) -- is Samsung's proprietary feature that replicates a payment card's magnetic information. Working in tandem with traditional NFC, the advantage of MST is that it'll open Samsung Pay up to 90 % of pre-existing payment terminals in the United States, where competitors like Google Wallet and Apple Pay are tied down to NFC-only systems. Exclusive to the flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, it'll enable the company's top tier handsets to get in on Samsung Pay before anybody else. Unfortunately, it's a little rough around the edges at present, so getting everything to run without flaw is taking some time.
Additionally, fingerprint verification is also rumored to be a little buggy for now. So while Samsung did have plans to get things up and running by this month, it'll now wait until September 1st, ensuring everything is as seamless as can be prior to launch.
With the presence of those aforementioned payment systems from Apple and Google, Samsung enters a market that, while still emerging, is fairly busy nonetheless. Boosted by the acquisition of Loop Pay, though, Samsung definitely has a couple of trump cards, and it'll be interesting to see how Samsung Pay stacks up against its adversaries one it hits the scene.
source: BusinessKorea
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