Verizon will not support Samsung Pay (UPDATE)

If you are a Verizon Wireless customer, better not count on using Samsung Pay. A tweet from the Samsung Support team confirms that Big Red is not supporting Sammy's mobile payment service. Samsung Pay is set to debut in the U.S. on September 28. It will actually launch in South Korea in just two days, on August 20th. Meanwhile, T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and U.S. Cellular customers will be able to employ Samsung Pay.

Samsung has already announced that it will be partnering in the U.S with Visa, MasterCard and Bank of America. Thanks to Sammy's purchase of LoopPay, Samsung Pay can be used even at retail locations where an NFC wireless network has not been built. In those cases, MST (magnetic secure transmission) allows you to select a card from your virtual wallet, and swipe it along the POS terminal in the same manner as swiping a card. Because Samsung Pay can be used at any retailer that has a machine for swiping credit cards, it is supported by many more stores than other mobile payment services are.

At stores that have a NFC pipeline built out, the Samsung Pay member again selects a card from his virtual wallet but this time a mere tap on the special terminal is all that is required to close the transaction. In either case, Samsung says that the credit card information is secure. Unlike Apple, which collects a piece of the transaction fee that the bank receives on a credit card purchase using Apple Pay, Samsung is not receiving a fee from the use of Samsung Pay.

Samsung is planning on sending out an update for certain handsets that will allow them to use Samsung Pay. The recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ and Samsung Galaxy Note5 have the feature pre-installed. A select group of Samsung handset owners in the U.S. will get to be part of a beta test of the service, which will start on August 25th.


source: @SamsungSupport via SamMobile, AndroidGuys

UPDATE: Verizon has just reached out to us and we have the following statement from the carrier: "We are in the process of evaluating Samsung Pay and we will keep our customers updated on any news regarding the service." If you are a Verizon customer and hope to use Samsung Pay, apparently there still is some hope that Verizon will decide to support the service.