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.

Comments

Re:What the fuck is Samsung Pay?

[Scutter]

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.