Samsung Pay was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in March and since then the company has put its new payments service through live beta trials in South Korea, the trials have ended and it’s now confident enough to make this service available to the public. At its event for the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ today in New York City the company formally announced that Samsung Pay will be available in the United States on September 28th.
The service is already supported by Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, they’ll receive a software update prior to the launch date while Samsung Pay will come preloaded on the new handsets.
Samsung Pay is unique because it doesn’t only support near field communication or NFC, it also supports magnetic secure transmission or MST which enables merchants with legacy credit card machines to accept payments through Samsung Pay, they aren’t required to purchase costly new terminals to accept the payment method.
It is courtesy of this MST technology that Samsung Pay will be accepted almost anywhere customers can pay by card today and this is going to help drive up adoption numbers for the new service.
Samsung Pay will first go live in Samsung’s home country South Korea on August 20th and in the U.S. on September 28th, select users in the country will be able to beta test the service starting August 25th prior to its arrival next month.
Filed in . Read more about Samsung and Samsung Pay. Source: global.samsungtomorrow