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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.)"
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.
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.
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?
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.