Samsung Pay


Samsung Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by Samsung Electronics that lets users make payments using compatible phones and other Samsung-produced devices. The service supports contactless payments using near-field communications, but also supports magnetic stripe–only payment terminals by incorporating magnetic secure transmission. In countries like India it also supports bill payments.
The service was launched in South Korea on August 20, 2015 and in the United States on September 28 of the same year. In 2016, at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the telecommunications company announced that Samsung Pay would be coming soon to a variety of banks in Australia, Brazil, Spain and Singapore.

Service

Samsung Pay was developed from the intellectual property of LoopPay, a crowdfunded startup company that Samsung acquired in February 2015. The service supports both NFC-based mobile payment systems, as well as those that only support magnetic stripes. This is accomplished via a technology known as magnetic secure transmission, which emulates the swipe of a permanent magnet strip past a reader by generating the near-field magnetic waveform directly. LoopPay's developers stated that because of this design, the technology would work with "nearly 90%" of all point-of-sale units in the United States.
On phones, the Samsung Pay menu is launched by swiping from the bottom of the screen. Different credit, debit and loyalty cards can be loaded into the app, and selected by swiping between them on-screen.
In South Korea, Samsung Pay can be used for online payments and to withdraw money on selected banks' ATMs.
In Mainland China, Samsung Pay supports In-app payments, QR code payments and public transportation cards of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities.
In Hong Kong, Samsung Pay can be linked with Octopus cards, called Smart Octopus, to make electronic payments with stored value service for payments in online or offline systems.
In India, Samsung Pay supports the government's UPI / BharatQR. It also supports bill payments via the Bharat Bill Payment System.

Security

Samsung Pay's security measures are based on Samsung Knox and ARM TrustZone technologies; credit card information is stored in a secure token. Payments must be authenticated using a fingerprint scan or passcode.
In August 2016, security researcher Salvador Mendoza disclosed a potential flaw with Samsung Pay, arguing that its security tokens were not sufficiently randomized and could become predictable. He also designed a handheld device that could be used to skim magnetic secure transmission tokens, and another which could spoof magnetic stripes on actual card readers using the token. Samsung responded to the report, stating that "If at any time there is a potential vulnerability, we will act promptly to investigate and resolve the issue".
Samsung Pay will not work with devices whose Knox warranty bit is tripped.

Availability

DateSupport for payment cards issued in
August 20, 2015 South Korea
September 28, 2015 United States
March 29, 2016 China
June 2, 2016 Spain
June 15, 2016 Australia
June 16, 2016 Singapore
July 13, 2016 Puerto Rico
July 19, 2016 Brazil
September 28, 2016 Russia
November 8, 2016 Canada
February 8, 2017 Thailand
February 24, 2017 Malaysia
March 22, 2017 India
April 27, 2017 Sweden
April 27, 2017 United Arab Emirates
May 16, 2017 United Kingdom
May 23, 2017 Switzerland
May 23, 2017 Taiwan
May 25, 2017 Hong Kong
September 28, 2017 Vietnam
November 15, 2017 Belarus
January 30, 2018 Mexico
March 22, 2018 Italy
April 26, 2018 France
August 21, 2018 South Africa
March 23, 2019 Indonesia
January 21, 2020 Kazakhstan

In May 2016, it was reported that Samsung was developing a spin-off of the service known as Samsung Pay Mini. This service will be used for online payments only, and is also being targeted as a multi-platform service.
In January 2017, Samsung has confirmed that Samsung Pay Mini will not only work on its Galaxy devices but on other Android phones as well, as long as they are running Android Lollipop or above and have a screen resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels or higher.
In June 2017, Samsung launched Samsung Pay Mini and currently available on Galaxy J7 Max/On Max
Availability is limited not just on the basis of where the payment card is issued, but also on the basis of the phone's region code. Thus a phone made for an unsupported region can never use Samsung Pay even if it physically resides in a supported region and has a local SIM card. The rather unrelated error "Connection error. Unable to connect to Samsung Pay temporarily. Try again later." is how Samsung Pay reports this problem.
In June 2020, Samsung announced a partnership between Samsung Pay, Curve and Mastercard for the launch of Samsung Pay Card in the UK and more EE countries where Curve has customers later in 2020.

Comparison with instant payment

In digital wallet-based payment systems like PayPal, Apple Pay, AliPay, WeChat Pay, etc. users receive immediate notification of the transaction, but funds are transferred at best in the next business day.
The settlement time depends on the payment method chosen by the customer, while for instant payment systems, the funds are transferred within seconds or minutes.

Compatible devices

Flagship smartphones

Galaxy S

Galaxy A

Available to Samsung Pay users within Hong Kong, Macau and China.