While Samsung Pay has a distinct advantage over other mobile payment systems since it doesn’t need a new NFC terminal, it still is pretty limited since first of all, it is only for the newer smartphone models, and it was only available in the US and South Korea. Late last year they promised to add more compatible devices and now at CES 2016, they announced that it will be available in six more countries, to wide its reach further.
Earlier rumors said that China, Spain, and the United Kingdom will finally have Samsung Pay in the first quarter of 2016. That has now been confirmed, as well as the addition of three more countries, namely Australia, Brazil, and Singapore. While there was no specific timeline shared for each of the countries, it is understood that it is within the year of course, maybe all in the first quarter.
A few weeks ago, Samsung confirmed that they will be making other older and lower-end models compatible with Samsung Pay, although they did not specify which models. For US users, they will also be adding online shopping for the digital wallet, taking on other established names like PayPal. There is no word yet on how this will work exactly, and we also don’t know for now if the six new countries that will get Samsung Pay later on will also be able to use the online purchase feature.
Both Android Pay and Apple Pay are only compatible with the newer NFC terminals while Samsung Pay can work with both the older magnetic stripe terminals with the Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) tech and the newer NFC versions. Let’s see if expanding to more countries, and more devices will finally be the breakthrough that Samsung needs in this particular market.
VIA: Android Authority
