Since launching last year, Samsung Pay has been gaining ground left and right, and launching all sorts of new markets. Today, Samsung announced that they are bringing Samsung Pay on over to China. This comes shortly after Apple launched their own mobile payment system, Apple Pay, in the country. However, Android Pay is not yet available in China, and that’s largely due to Google having withdrawn from the country years ago due to their censorship laws. Samsung Pay still only works on Samsung smartphones, and while Samsung does have a somewhat small market share in China it’s still a big market for them because they are the largest country. Sitting at roughly 1.3 billion, and even a 15% market share there is still a huge number of users.
Yesterday, Samsung also announced that their mobile payments system has accounted for over $500 million in transactions while having 5 million users. That’s an average of about $100 in purchases per person. That’s a pretty telling number, considering the platform is only available in a couple of countries – South Korea and the US only. Additionally, it has only been available since around September of 2015, making it just about 6 months old. Of course, Samsung’s promotions for Samsung Pay have definitely helped it gain ground. Giving out wireless chargers, headphones and much more, just to sign up.
Samsung Pay is coming to China in March, but that’s not the end of the upcoming roll out for Samsung Pay. As the company also announced that the platform will be rolling out to Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain and the UK. Now those countries didn’t get a specified time as to when it’ll be available, just that Samsung Pay will be there before the end of the year. Seeing as we’re only at the end of February now, there’s still quite a ways to go. Canada is also on the list, but they haven’t committed to actually rolling out their mobile payment platform there just yet.
Where Samsung Pay uses MST technology, it means that just about any system at any store can handle Samsung Pay. Because it works with the strip reader that you’d normally swipe your card through. As well as working with NFC like Apple Pay and Android Pay. Unfortunately, Samsung Pay is only available on the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6. Although it’ll likely be available on the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge that are being announced tomorrow in Barcelona.