Samsung Pay Launches In Korea In August, US In September

Mark Wilson writes: The main thrust of Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event was to launch the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+, but the company also provided some details about Samsung Pay. With so many similarly-specced smartphones vying for attention, each manufacturer needs to offer something slightly different, and Samsung is hoping that a new digital payment system will prove attractive to people. Going head to head with Android Pay and Apple Pay is Samsung Pay. As well as offering compatibility with the newly announced Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+, Samsung's payment system is supported by many of its older handsets. It will launch in its home country of Korea on August 20, and will spread to the US at the end of September.

Comments

Yays

[Greyfox]

One more app that will get wiped when the first thing I do with my new phone is root it and install CyanogenMod.

MST is a dud technology

[viperidaenz]

Emulating a magnetic card swipe with a magnetic field is a dud.
If doesn't work with chip and pin cards where the terminal has a chip reader, since the mag swipe will be responded with "Please Insert Card".

LoopPay, the company Samsung bought to acquire the technology, says "they're working on it" which is only going to be "we're trying to convince card issuers and terminal providers to removed their fraud protections"

It's also not going to work if your bank uses "Liquid encryption technology[1]", where the magstrip data is updated every time you put your card in their ATM's. It's primary purpose is to stop card skimmers, which LoopPay effectively is. If you scanned your card in to LoopPay then put your real card in an ATM, the next time you use your LoopPay, your bank will lock out your card due to fraud detection, since it will be using the old mag strip data.

[1]

Re:MST is a dud technology

[tlhIngan]

Emulating a magnetic card swipe with a magnetic field is a dud.
If doesn't work with chip and pin cards where the terminal has a chip reader, since the mag swipe will be responded with "Please Insert Card".

LoopPay, the company Samsung bought to acquire the technology, says "they're working on it" which is only going to be "we're trying to convince card issuers and terminal providers to removed their fraud protections"

Not to mention, it'll be obsoleted Oct 1, 2015 in the US. That's when the implementation of EMV starts, and more importantly than that - the insecure link will be liable.

So if you have a a Chip+PIN card, and the store has a magstripe reader, even though their bank supports EMV, any fraud goes to the merchant. If instead the bank doesn't support EMV, then the bank pays out.

With this, if the customer is issued an EMV card and uses the stripe, guess who foots the bill? The customer.

Even Square is coming out with a new chip reader - and if you're pre-ordering it (which you should), they'll pay for the fraud while you use the magstripe reader until you get the chip reader.

There's nothing special in your account that says to use chip - I've used the magstripe even when the store has chip readers - it's just that the terminal I was using didn't have a working chip reader. In this case, if you swipe, it goes through. In a chip reader equipped terminal, if you swipe, a bit in the magstripe tells the reader to re-try using the chip instead. (The reader isn't always communicating with the bank, so it doesn't know if the card presented has a chip. The bit in the magstripe lets compatible readers know there is a more secure way to do the transaction).

And to be honest, we've had EMV so long in Canada, I forget about signing the slip on those exceedingly rare times they only have a magstripe reader.

I've only had problems at one store where their terminals had crappy firmware and would often lock up the chip reader - no amount of inserting or swiping would work. One day, on a lark, I used the tap thing (which they didn't support, but the reader was capable), which rejected the attempt. Surprisingly, that rejection reset the chip reader because it started working again.

But yeah, Oct 1, 2015, the US comes into the modern age. If you run a store and haven't upgraded your readers yet, better hurry up. (Though, even before EMV was rolled out in Canada, most terminals started sprouting (non-functional) chip readers way ahead of time, So hopefully it's just a firmware update to activate the chip part.

Re:Will spread?

[littledino]

Yep. I have Apple Pay on my phone and never been inclined to use it. I think the more of these mobile payment schemes that crop up, the more confusing they become for anyone to use.