Samsung Pay will go live in the US and Korea in the summer of 2015 and in other areas, including Europe and China, at a later date.
Samsung Pay combines NFC, tokenization, Samsung’s Knox security platform, fingerprint biometrics and passcodes with the magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology developed by LoopPay and acquired by Samsung in February 2015.
The inclusion of MST in the Samsung Galaxy S6 means that owners will be able to make mobile payments at “most” card acceptance points in the US. The 10% or so that won’t support Samsung Pay include those that require the card to be fully dipped or where the device takes the card. Some proprietary solutions will also not support the service.
Once the card is added, the user swipes up from the bezel to invoke the Samsung Pay app, selects the desired payment card, and authenticates with the fingerprint sensor. Tapping the device to the point-of-sale terminal concludes the transaction.
Samsung has partnered with MasterCard and Visa and is working to expand the ecosystem for Samsung Pay with financial partners globally, including American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and US Bank.
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