As we all know, Samsung might be big name here in the West, but they’re an even bigger deal at home in South Korea. Samsung Pay has been something that the company has been working towards for quite some time now, and with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge now available, Samsung Pay can finally start hitting the streets and be used en mass. Samsung Tomorrow’s Korean blog has shared the experience from last month’s World IT Show, held in Seoul, where Samsung was predictably a big ticket seller. The main attraction was Android Pay.
During the event, Samsung had all of their latest products on show, but they also had a demo coffee shop setup to allow users to try out Samsung Pay. Just as with Apple Pay and now Android Pay, Samsung Pay uses NFC to connect with a sales terminal and then uses the internet to authorize your payment and charge your account. When it works well, it works great, but as with all technologies in the payment space, it will be a long time before this catches on worldwide and in greater numbers. One thing that sets Samsung Pay aside from the rest is the ability to use a barcode to make a payment as well, meaning that older sales terminals can still be used as well.
Security has been a driving concern behind mobile payments for quite some time, and Samsung is no stranger to mobile security with their KNOX suite, but Samsung Pay takes things to another level. When talking about the Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge, credit card information is encrypted to a separate part of the device, rather than being bundled in with the rest of the internal storage. Put that together with the fingerprint sensor and the need to use a fingerprint to authorize any payment and the systems comes out as one that seems fairly secure. As we’ve seen with Apple Pay however, just which retailers pledge their support for Samsung Pay in the future will make or break the platform. More pictures of Samsung Pay can be found down below.
