You’ll need patience, but Verizon says Samsung Pay is coming to its phones :-
payments are really heating up in 2015, after Apple made a huge push into the space with Apple Pay, and Google introduced Android Pay. Now, Samsung has joined the fray with its own mobile payment system called Samsung Pay. Here’s what you need to know.Updated on 10-07-2015 by David Curry: Added Verizon Wireless support announcement.
Official launch in the United States
Samsung launched Samsung Pay in South Korea on August 20, and in the U.S. on September 28, while the UK, Spain, and China will follow later this year. At first, only Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Cellular supported Samsung Pay in the U.S., but Verizon Wireless subsequently announced on Twitter it had evaluated the service, and would also provide the feature to its subscribers. However, Verizon hasn’t provided a launch date, and has only said the feature will be activated in the future.Related: Read our review of the Galaxy Note 5, and the Galaxy S6 Edge here
Samsung Pay is available on the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus, and Note 5 devices, and requires an over-the-air update to work. To check if it’s available on your device, go to Settings > System > About Phone > Software Update. Once you’ve added credit, debit, and loyalty cards, you open the Samsung Pay app with a swipe, choose the card you want to use, and authenticate the purchase with your fingerprint.
Samsung extended a partnership with MasterCard overseas, which will allow Samsung Pay users in European territories to activate debit, credit, and reloadable prepaid cards on MasterCard’s payments platform. The company also launched a trial program in South Korea for which only “select customers” were picked.
Samsung is offering a free wireless charger or wallet flip cover to customers who recently purchased a Galaxy Note 5 or S6 Edge Plus for activating a credit card on Samsung Pay. The promotion is valid until October 11 and has to be redeemed by November 15, 2015.
Which banks and stores support it?
The
MST technology ensures that Samsung Pay supports private label credit
cards (PLCC), thanks to partnerships with Synchrony Financial, Blackhawk
Network, First Data Corporation. The company also joined forces with
the two biggest credit card providers, the aforementioned MasterCard and
Visa, in making Samsung Pay a reality. In the United States, Samsung Pay is supported
by American Express, Bank of America, Citi, and US Bank. JPMorgan Chase
were expected to support Samsung Pay, but the two companies are still
in talks.The company estimates that some 30 million merchant locations worldwide will accept Samsung pay at launch. In other words, Samsung believes that it has come up with the only mobile payment system that is universally accepted. In contrast, both Apple Pay and Google Wallet only work at select locations where NFC is accepted. It won’t work everywhere — credit card readers that require a physical trigger, like ATMs and gas pumps, aren’t compatible. But Samsung says the Samsung Pay will work at 80 percent of point-of-sale systems when it debuts.
Samsung Pay will be secured with Samsung’s own Knox security software, which is widely regarded as one of the best security systems for mobile devices, as well as ARM TrustZone. Just like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay doesn’t store personal account numbers on the user’s device, and uses tokenization to protect your credit card information whenever you make a purchase. If you should lose your phone, you can lock and disable the device remotely to turn off access to Samsung Pay, thanks to Samsung’s Find My Mobile feature.
It’s not going to work in rooted Android phones
Now that the service is live in South Korea, there is evidence that rooting the Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge will disable Samsung Pay. This isn’t surprising since a rooted device is less secure. If a user tries to use Samsung Pay on a rooted phone, they will will be prompted with a message saying, “Samsung Pay has been locked due to unauthorized modification.”Related: How to root your Android phone or tablet in 2015 (and unroot it)
Rooting a device is the process of obtaining complete administrative control of the operating system, which can make it more susceptible to hacking, and less secure. There are some advantages to rooting, but the security concerns more than outweigh them for the average person.
If you’re wondering if your Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge is rooted, it most likely isn’t. Samsung (and most other) phones aren’t rooted out of the box, and you would have needed to go through many complicated steps in order to achieve root, of which you would probably remember.
Samsung Pay is coming to smart TVs
Samsung’s positioning Samsung Pay as a platform, not purely contactless forms of payment. To that end, the company has announced Samsung Pay on TV, a feature coming to select Samsung smart TVs that’ll expedite the process of paying for content.
Samsung
That first-time setup could be a headache. (You’ll have to add each funding source individually to Samsung Pay on TV.) If you’ve got a Samsung mobile account with saved billing details, though, they’ll transfer automatically. Owners of the electronics giant’s 2014 and 2015 smart TVs will begin to see games that integrate Pay on TV. The list of supported titles will be quite small initially — about seven — but Samsung says it’ll add content “within new and world-renowned games” in the near future.
