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Samsung Pay Could Come To More Non-Premium Smartphones (cnet.com)

Gordon Gottsegen, writing for CNET: Samsung Pay could end up on even more devices, starting with the Galaxy J series phones in India, Mashable reports. Samsung Pay lets you save credit cards, gift cards, and other payment methods onto your smartphone and then use it when paying. Your phone mimics your cards right down to the magnetic signal, so it works in most places that accept credit cards thanks to Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and Near Field Communication (NFC). Just tap your device against the payment terminal and you're generally good to go. But only if you've owned a premium smartphone. Samsung Pay generally only features in pricier phones like the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy s7 Edge, though it has also come to the Galaxy A line and Samsung Gear S watches. Now, according to Mashable's sources, Samsung has quietly been adding the technology to cheaper phones too, and plans to experiment with the idea in India -- where Samsung Pay recently launched -- in the next few months. Makes perfect sense. In places such as India, the vast majority of card terminals (PoS) don't support NFC, and it is very difficult to convince a merchant to upgrade their terminals. There are two reasons for this: first, not a lot of payments services require NFC. For all they care, their existing PoS devices support credit cards and debit cards. Second is, payment terminals with NFC are expensive. Also, smart of Samsung to trickle this feature into its lower-end smartphones.

24 comments

  1. What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it Jamaican (mon)? Or just a really bad typo?

    1. Re:What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's french. Means mine. As in mine for the CIA or mine for the fire department.

    2. Re: What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MST Mimics a swipe of a magstripe? This does that work? Wave your phone nearby and thus magstripe reader acts like a swipe. I'd need to see that. Irie.

    3. Re: What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I've not heard of that before either. Android Pay can store loyalty cards, but only if they have bar codes. I don't see how my phone would allow magnetic stripe to be entered, let alone simulate swiping one when you are buying something.

    4. Re:What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be super pedantic, it means "my". French "mine" is "mien" (with a nasal vowel as in "un" or "vain" or "vin")

    5. Re: What's a "Mon Premium Smartphone"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are there magstripes in India and such in the first place? It's old tech. It would make sense for a 3rd world country to leap frog into chip and pin, which is 90s tech.

  2. Or, more banks could come to Samsung Pay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only one of my cards works with my S7, and if I have to have a wallet anyway why bother with mobile payments.

    1. Re:Or, more banks could come to Samsung Pay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a whopping 0.1 oz of weight you could avoid carrying around all day like a sucker. Think how much faster you'll be without it. The security risks are worth it!

  3. Be veerrry cautious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I heard Samsung's CEO is in jail for "Samsung Pay"

    1. Re:Be veerrry cautious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Soviet Russia, Samsung pays you!

  4. Bank on It by dohzer · · Score: 0

    More smart phones than before the banks jumped on the Android pay stuff and stopped the system around 5 years ago?

  5. Terrific news by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    With Samsung pay, your phone would also be explosive.

  6. No Thank You! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Samsung. No thank you! You put more than enough crapware on your phones as it is and with verizon all that shit is locked down unless I want to root a phone. Please DO NOT put more crapware on my phone. Seriously, limiting it to "premium" phones for a while didn't fool anyone into thinking it was a premium feature. It's a feature specifically for your bottom line -- to get a little slice of every transaction. No one uses your shitty second rate pay scam.

    Fewer and fewer people are buying your bullshit smeared, explodey phones.

    1. Re:No Thank You! by toonces33 · · Score: 1

      On my S5, Android Pay seems to have gotten broken by the Marshmallow update. Every time I try and use it, the damned thing hounds me for the administrative password. And this is despite the fact that I used my fingerprint to unlock the phone.

      So the stupid thing is basically unusable now. Simply not worth the effort. Samsung Pay seems like a joke to me, so I just pay cash or use EMV.

    2. Re:No Thank You! by habig · · Score: 1

      Samsung. No thank you! You put more than enough crapware on your phones as it is and with verizon all that shit is locked down unless I want to root a phone. Please DO NOT put more crapware on my phone.

      This++

      Can't uninstall it. Can't permanently disable it. All you can do is remember to go in there and force stop on two seperate services every time you reboot the phone, or every time it decides you really want it turned back on and something does it for you.

      And it's not just any crapware, it's wireless remote payment crapware. What could possibly go wrong?

    3. Re:No Thank You! by lucm · · Score: 1

      It's a feature specifically for your bottom line -- to get a little slice of every transaction.

      Samsung does NOT add an extra fee on the transaction, contrary to Apple (who charges $0.15 per transaction). Samsung doesn't make money with Samsung Pay, they do it just to make their device more convenient and more popular.

      But even if they were adding a fee, technically that would be a feature for the top line (revenue growth), not specifically the bottom line (profit growth). Sometimes the top line helps the bottom line, but not always; for instance, the more rides Uber gets, the more their top line grows, but they're not profitable to they're digging a bigger whole with each ride.

      A feature for the bottom line would be something that makes an existing process more efficient. For instance, when Microsoft removed the different webmail interfaces of hotmail, then the one for outlook.com, in favor of the awful outlook web, that was a feature that favored their bottom line since it made it easier for them to support an existing service.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  7. Anyone else by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Anyone else read that as Samsung Pry?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Go away, Samsung Pay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have samsung pay on my phone, and I don't want it there, but I cannot remove it. I can sort of disable it, but the next update and it's back to notifying me of its presence.

  9. What the fuck is Samsung Pay? by PCM2 · · Score: 1

    Serious question (maybe the wrong place to ask it): What is Samsung Pay?

    I have a Galaxy S7 but one of my main problems with it is that it's piled with so much crap that I don't know how to use (or turn off). My assumption was that Samsung Pay was just another of Samsung's attempts to do something that some other thing (like Android Pay) already does, but in its own, Samsung-y way. So I've pretty much ignored it. Now I seem to be hearing that Samsung Pay even works if the checkout terminal doesn't have NFC? If true, that's kind of cool, but how's that work?

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
    1. Re:What the fuck is Samsung Pay? by Scutter · · Score: 2

      Alright, even though Google is a thing that you should know how to use by now, I'll go ahead and bite.

      Samsung Pay is an electronic payment method similar to Apple Pay or Android Pay. It comes pre-loaded on high-end Samsung phones. One of its key differentiators is that it can use the MST magnetic coil in the back of the phone to mimic swiping your physical credit card through a card reader. This means it works at all of those terminals that don't yet have NFC readers built-in. Given the (relative) lack of market penetration for NFC-capable card readers, this is a Big Deal. Samsung's decision to push this tech down to lower-end phones (and especially to areas where NFC terminals are largely unheard of, such as India) will undoubtedly help them to grow their user base substantially.

      --

      "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
  10. Biggest obstacle to NFC by cashman73 · · Score: 1

    I am not a user of Samsung Pay, since I have an iPhone. But I do use Apple Pay whenever I get the chance. It's basically the same NFC technology in the end, and most places that I see the NFC wireless logo, I have not had a problem paying with Apple Pay even if it doesn't explicitly have the Apple Pay logo on it. From my perspective, the biggest obstacle to the acceptance of NFC-based payments is getting the retailers to adopt it. The banks are on board, because if the increased security, and many early adopters seem to like it's ease of use. Most of the time, when I go to an establishment and pay with my phone, I get the, "Wow! That's cool!" So people do seem to like the technology. However, the problem is that the store clerks accepting payments should not be reacting to the technology this way when people pay using their phones. Just last week, I was at a restaurant in Frankfort, Kentucky, and paid using Apple Pay, and the server as totally shocked and surprised that someone could pay with their phone! Seriously, it's your POS checkout system. You should be familiar with all forms of payment that are accepted. Why is NFC being adopted on various POS devices yet there is no training of the front-end clerks as to the fact that NFC-based payments are being accepted?

    1. Re:Biggest obstacle to NFC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well I have "contactless pay" on my debit card, I do not know if it's NFC or not, and I never use it.
      As far as I know it doesn't allow me to draw cash from an ATM anyway, and this is what I use the card for the most. I don't even understand how it would be more secure to use the contactless, since with the "contactful" way I have to enter a PIN. Maybe that's why the ATM don't use NFC/contactless?

      Not to mention Android phones are insecure, and they now have a complete monopoly of the non Apple smartphone market. Since there's no computer security on phone then I would risk sending details about my payments to unknown criminals or companies in Russia, Ukraine, China, Korea or the US.

    2. Re:Biggest obstacle to NFC by TokyoJimu · · Score: 1

      I've found that many small businesses that used to have NFC capability lost it when they did the upgrades to accept EMV (chip cards) and didn't spend the extra to also get NFC. So several places where I used to use Apple Pay no longer accept it (or any NFC).

    3. Re:Biggest obstacle to NFC by lucm · · Score: 1

      Why is NFC being adopted on various POS devices yet there is no training of the front-end clerks as to the fact that NFC-based payments are being accepted?

      Because front-end clerks are disposable resources and NFC hasn't reached yet the threshold that justifies additional training. Keep in mind that many fast food chains and car services are actively working on solutions that would replace low wage workers. There's no incentive to train people.

      --
      lucm, indeed.