Samsung’s mobile payment service – aptly called Samsung Pay – has finally made its way to the Gear S2 smartwatch. When it unveiled the smartwatch last year the company did say that the wearable device would get support for its mobile payments service at some point. Samsung Pay has now been expanded to the Gear S2, albeit in beta.
The company started rolling out an update to the Samsung Gear app earlier today which adds Samsung Pay to the Gear S2. A support page on the company’s website confirms that Samsung Pay Beta is available for all Gear S2 users starting today.
To use Samsung Pay on their smartwatch, Gear S2 owners have to update to the latest firmware and then download the latest update for the Samsung Gear app. Tapping on Samsung Pay Beta in the Gear app brings up a few steps that users have to go through before they can start using the service with the Gear S2.
Users then have to enter a secure password on their smartwatch before they can add supported cards. It would have been easier if users didn’t need to re-add cards that they have already added to Samsung Pay on mobile but that’s not the case here, at least in the beta.
Samsung Pay can be launched on the Gear S2 by long-pressing the physical back button. This will bring up the default card for payment. Bear in mind that Samsung Pay on Gear S2 will only work with NFC terminals since the smartwatch doesn’t have support for MST which makes Samsung Pay compatible with conventional credit card machines.
This open beta is only available to users in the United States and it’s limited to the Bluetooth-only model of the Gear S2. Samsung Pay can’t be used with 3G Gear S2 right now.
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