For the past few months we have been hearing rumors that Samsung is working on a new payments service, today the company confirmed it, Samsung Pay was formally announced at Samsung’s event today in Barcelona. The Samsung Pay announcement came as part of the company’s Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge unveil, both devices support this service, which utilizes NFC and MST or Magnetic Secure Transaction.
MasterCard and Visa, two of the most widely used payment networks across the globe, are supported by Samsung Pay. Potential partners that might be added in the future include Citi, American Express and others.
According to Samsung CEO JK Shin, “The secure and simple payment process, coupled with our robust partner network, makes Samsung Pay a truly game-changing service that will bring value to consumers and our partners in the ecosystem.”
Payments will be authorized by the fingerprint sensor on Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. Sensitive card information is never stored or transferred as payments as authenticated through token-based encryption.
This new payments service is expected to go live this summer once the company’s latest smartphones have sold enough units across the globe. The company has said that Samsung Pay will work with existing merchants as they wouldn’t have to get additional hardware just to be able to accept Samsung Pay.
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