The ‘Next Big Thing’ for Samsung and the rest of the mobile world is definitely Samsung Pay – and by including ‘the rest of the mobile world,’ I mean Android Pay and yes, even Apple Pay for those stuck in their ecosystem. Goldman Sachs estimates the m-commerce will be nearly half of all e-commerce by 2018 and others are estimating that by 2018, retail purchases with smartphones and tablets will reach $707 billion – up from $182 billion in 2013.
Mobile payments via smartphones are coming, and coming with a vengeance. Even the usually optimistic Samsung did not foresee the popularity of their Samsung Pay – over 500,000 people have already signed up for the service in South Korea, so Samsung’s anticipated excitement for its US debut on September 28 is understandable. Analysts believe that Samsung will have over 1 million users signed up in another month or two.
Samsung Electronics, which has been somewhat ‘gun shy’ lately due to lower sales figures, is now accelerating its efforts to roll out Samsung pay to other countries based on this surge of interest in mobile payments – probably in no small way to its arch nemesis, Apple and Apple Pay, which seemed to legitimize it. Samsung is in the works to release Samsung Pay in China by the end of the year, followed by Europe, including the UK and Spain. Samsung is going ahead and securing agreements with all of the largest banks in the US – Bank of America, US Bank, Citi, American Express, Visa and MasterCard, and in China – UnionPay that issues about 5 billion credit and check cards annually and has 22 million affiliated stores nationwide.
In order to use Samsung Pay, you must have a supported device, such as a Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ or Galaxy Note 5 and open an active account with Samsung with an appropriately issued credit card, such as Bank of America, US Bank, American Express, Citi, Visa or MasterCard – and those include a debit Visa or MasterCard as well.
And while there are those naysayers that are upset you have to own a Samsung device, please remember that what makes Samsung Pay different from other mobile pay services is because they purchased LoopPay. This acquisition allows Samsung devices to make not only purchases via NFC – like Android Pay – but also allows them to make payments using the Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology and the swipe of their fingerprint. This will permit Samsung Pay to make mobile payments at ‘most’ retailers that accept credit cards that they swipe through a reader. Samsung Pay also carries out the transaction without passing your credit card information through the retailer’s system, but instead uses a secure ‘token’ – making Samsung Pay one of the most accepted and secure ways to pay.