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Samsung Pay Launches In the United States
An anonymous reader writes: Ready to take on Apple Pay and Android Pay, Samsung Pay is now live in the United States. The service has already launched in South Korea, where it saw over $30 million in transactions its first month. The Verge reports: "Samsung Pay may be more capable than other competing services, but its availability has some limits. First, it's only built into Samsung's newest devices: the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge and Edge+, and the Note 5. You also need a credit or debit card from Visa, MasterCard, or American Express card, and it has to be issued by one of just a few banks: Bank of America, Citi, American Express, and US Bank are available at launch. (Samsung Pay also works with customer loyalty cards.)"
They all communicate through NFC. The differences are in the back end payment systems. To the consumer, there is no real difference except in what cards are supported or how their particular device works. Apple made Apple Pay easy to use on their phones because they use biometrics (fingerprints), and easy on the Watch because you have to log in only once, when you put it on; it auto-locks when you take it off. We'll see how easy Samsung made it: do you have to enter a PIN every time, or do they have some other magic?
John
s/Apple/Every cell phone manufacturer/g
They all communicate through NFC. The differences are in the back end payment systems. To the consumer, there is no real difference except in what cards are supported or how their particular device works. Apple made Apple Pay easy to use on their phones because they use biometrics (fingerprints), and easy on the Watch because you have to log in only once, when you put it on; it auto-locks when you take it off. We'll see how easy Samsung made it: do you have to enter a PIN every time, or do they have some other magic?
Samsung's hardware implementation is actually a bit different and arguably better than anything else available at the moment. They support NFC, so in that sense it's similar to all the other offers. However, newer devices (i.e. Galaxy S6) also have LoopPay hardware built in, which means you can use your device on magnetic, non-NFC credit card terminals. The hardware emulates a card swipe by creating a magnetic field. You hold your phone next to the terminal where you would normally swipe a card, and it Just Works. These newer devices also incorporate fingerprint scanners, so in that sense the security is similar to Apple's. It's actually pretty interesting technology.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I had this two years ago on my Samsung S5. It was called ISIS Wallet, and then after the rise of the same-named terror group, was renamed Softcard. Amex had a deal where they'd credit me back $1 per swipe (minimum $1 purchase), up to 50 times per month. Those were good times, if you could figure out where the magic tapping sweet spot was on your phone.
Then, Apple Pay comes out, and it suddenly becomes cool. Except Rite Aid, CVS, etc. changed their machines to no longer accept any of the other payment systems just to block Apple Pay adoption because they planned to launch their own system this year under an alliance led by Walmart (which is still non-existent at this point).
Then, Google bought Softcard, and just killed the service. I guess they just have cash to burn. And now Samsung re-launches the service as Samsung Pay. I feel like I'm back where I was two years ago, except I'm no longer paid to swipe, and there are even less places where I can tap to pay. Pardon me, but *yawn*.
Another way to drain my wallet, yippee!
It's like a dream come true. Thank you, corporate overlords!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I will happily take out my credit card from my wallet, which I have to carry ANYWAY (cash, driver's license, insurance cards, etc). To me it is no less accessible than my phone and far easier to use (find phone, unlock it, launch some stupid app, wait, make selections, whatever.... vs. swipe, click on OK, and perhaps sign). And my credit card, itself, is not always connected to a network, subject to remote hack, it also doesn't run out of battery. I really don't want yet another third party tracking what I do in addition to the credit company either.
I just don't see the big whoop.
Judging by the commercial that shows someone putting an iPhone up to the payment reader, and nothing happening, then the clerk shakes their hand "no" and a Samsung phone replaces the iPhone and the payment gets accepted, I'm going to guess that every phone will require its own payment reader. Apparently Samsung is trying to show iPhones not working with their payment reader as a feature, according to the commercial at least.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Whatever Apple does, Samsung does it, or will do it. Is there is anything Samsung did, then Apple catches up? (big things, not the keyboard color). Shouldn't we have more empathy for the creators, less for the copiers.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Does it really take 2%-3% of the dollar value of each transaction to debit one bank account and credit another? That's what you're being indirectly charged when you use a credit card to buy something (the merchant has to pay that much, so they adjust their prices to compensate). Mobile payments had the chance to overthrow the entrenched credit card companies which are enriching themselves by setting up a tollbooth for all electronic transactions. The actual cost is probably somewhere around 0.1%-0.5%. The industry needs a good competitive kick in the pants to get rid of this profiteering. But instead [Android/Apple/Samsung] Pay are just setting themselves up as another way to buy stuff using your credit card, without physically using your credit card.
And no, the credit card does not protect you from fraud. The credit card companies have gamed it so the merchant pays for fraud, so you're already paying for fraud in the purchase price of whatever it is you're buying. The credit card transaction fees and exorbitant interest rates pay for people who become delinquent on their credit card bills and never pay the credit card company back.
And for everything else, there's Mastercard.
I'd expect the global uptake to be on par with the number of posts in this thread. But, it's mobile technology and I'm still kind of amazed at what people will be convinced is worth buying for the things they do with it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
NFC pay, large screen size, watch, etc - they are just cloning too. Now they have third-party apps on Apple TV (like Android boxes since day 1) and a clone of the MS Surface. They still haven't caught up in waterproofing their phone. The fingerpoint sensor is pretty much their only "first" in the last several years. Let's face it - Apple has stagnated, and the competition has caught up.
What Samsung did with the S6, though, is just pathetic. The microSD slot, the removable battery, and the waterproofing were what made the previous S5 differentiated. Rather than integrate all the improvements in the market, they decided they'd make a truly worse carbon copy of the iPhone. Any news on that modular Google phone?
Why should I try this service instead of google wallet? Gw works perfectly fine for me.
The huge advantage of using one of these device payment systems over taking out your wallet and swiping your credit card is security. When you use a tokenizing NFC payment system, the merchant gets a credit card number that works exactly like a real credit card number, but can only be used once. Nobody can rip you off by skimming the number from the point-of-sale device or by some logger hidden in the store software.
If you want to be a real Luddite, carry wads of cash around everywhere.
I tried it out with my American Express card. I used it against a normal magnetic card reader and it detected my card as being swiped. For once Samsung made something that actually works as intended.
A neat little bonus is that I now get push notifications whenever my credit card is charged. If anybody steals my credit card, I will know the instant they try to charge something to it.
No it's showing that iPhones do not work for the majority of payment readers (in the US anyway) that are not NFC-enabled. Samsung's method works with both NFC and magnetic strip readers. This will be less and less of an advantage as the US catches up with the rest of the world.
It certainly made sense in Korea, where Samsung has a 46% market share and Apple ~24%.
In the US? It's almost exactly the opposite - Apple has nearly a 50% market share, and Apple half that.
What the hell were they thinking?
Please help metamoderate.
I read the headline as "Samsung Pays Lunches in the US" and wondered what weird out-of-court settlement they now had agreed to.
Magnetic stripe feature is basically useless this late in the game. After October 1st in the US, liability for card-present fraud will switch to merchants not supporting chip based transactions. I expect the move away from magnetic stripe transactions will happen very soon.
Why reserve all your hate for Samsung? It is equally ludicrous to trust ANY phone vendor with even the smallest amount of financial data. I will not use this. Ever. Well, I mean I WILL use it when the drooling sheeple use it so much that all other forms of payment get phased out and it becomes mandatory to use what will by that time be a chip embedded in your hand right next to the mark of the beast and just to the left of the iPalm skin surface screen. But until then, no way am I using this.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
And for everything else, there's Mastercard.
I'd expect the global uptake to be on par with the number of posts in this thread. But, it's mobile technology and I'm still kind of amazed at what people will be convinced is worth buying for the things they do with it.
Nobody enjoys having their still living flesh ground into a fine paste and fed to ravenous pitbulls, but if they had a mobile app for it, people would still buy it. Especially if it was available ONLY on Apple (or ONLY on Android, etc).
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What's hilarious, is that I've seen the chip reader terminals everywhere, but I've only seen one where the chip reader was activated. Also: only have received a chipped card from Amex. Still haven't gotten one from Chase for either my debit card or my credit card, so I'm doubtful that deadline (two days from now) will be met without extension.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Samsung just likes to re-brand Google's products. Google voice becomes "S Voice", Google Keep becomes "S Memo". I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung Pay is actually Google Pay re-branded.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
...does it need carrier support? What the hell does Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or whomever the fuck sells the data plan (or the phone, or both) have to agree on? Is it not enough that MasterCard, Visa and the banks and retailers have to agree on supporting (yet another fucking) phone payment system, that the damn carrier wants in too? Fuck! Are these people idiots?
Yeah, except 100% of those payment terminals are being replaced due to the mandated shift in card-present liability in October.
That's some seriously wishful thinking there, I like the enthusiasm though :P