There has been a number of trends developing in 2015 and one of the bigger ones is the use of paying for goods with your Android device. While this has always been something that you could do with your smartphone, this year, saw a resurgence in the market with a number of high-profile mobile payment options coming though. Of course, from the Android perspective, the big one was the introduction of Android Pay during Google’s annual I/O conference earlier in the year.
However, as the year has gone on and other payment solutions have come through, it seems Samsung’s own option, the aptly named, ‘Samsung Pay’, has been one of the front runners in early adoption. This is partly due to the fact that as well as supporting NFC (like Android Pay), Samsung’s option can also make use of more traditional payment methods, thanks to the acquisition they made of LoopPay not so long ago. Although, another aspect of its early success is that Samsung seem to be continually adding new partners and features. Well, improving on what is already becoming a very rich payment solution, Samsung has this morning announced a range of gift cards which can now be used with Samsung Pay.
In terms of the supported gift cards, Samsung now confirms that as many as fifty popular merchant cards can now be used with Samsung Pay. A few of the named companies listed by Samsung include Babies R Us, Toys R Us, Bass Pro Shops, Domino’s, eBay, GameStop, Nike, Regal Entertainment Group and Staples. However, that is not all as the announcement from Samsung also details that the Samsung Pay app will now contain a newly including gift card store so that you can purchase gift cards for you or someone else and have them immediately loaded to your Samsung Pay account. The announcement also does make it clear that the fifty merchants listed is not a finite list and they will be adding more merchants in the coming months. So if you are already making use of Samsung Pay, then it now seems you can load, store, use and even buy gift cards all from within the app.