Samsung Pay was updated with support for Discover cards earlier this month, with the change reportedly being rolled out over the weekend. The South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) originally announced that its mobile payments service will be compatible with Discover cards two years ago and it’s currently unclear why the company took so long to deliver on that promise, though some industry watchers are speculating that the issue was related to licenses and transaction fees that Samsung and Discover were negotiating. This possibility is further evidenced by the fact that Discover itself initially said that its cards will become a part of Samsung’s portable payments ecosystem in early 2016, indicating that the delay wasn’t caused by any technical issues.
Having originally debuted with no annual fees and above-average limits, the Discover card disrupted the industry when it became available in the mid-’80s and remains a popular choice among consumers to date. While Samsung Pay’s newly added support for Discover cards will ennoble the company’s mobile payments solution and make it more versatile, the service still has a relatively limited availability seeing how it’s only supported by high-end Galaxy-branded devices in select countries. The Seoul-Based consumer electronics manufacturer previously hinted that it’s looking to bring Samsung Pay to its mid-range and entry-level offerings in the future but the firm has yet to make such a move. A number of industry insiders believe that Samsung Pay will initially be made available on a wider variety of the firm’s devices in India, one of the most lucrative markets for mobile payments services in the world.
Samsung may eventually also decide to bring its solution to third-party devices, though that possible expansion is likely still years away. Unlike most of its alternatives, Samsung Pay utilizes both Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and Near Field Communications (NFC), making the service compatible with everything from modern to traditional payment terminals. Samsung is expected to add more banks and financial institutions to its mobile payments ecosystem going forward, in addition to expanding the capabilities of the service itself. An update on the company’s efforts to do so should follow in the coming months.