Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay was developed from the intellectual property of LoopPay, a crowdfunded startup company that Samsung acquired in February 2015. The service supports both NFC-based mobile payment systems (which are prioritized when support is detected),[4] as well as those that only support magnetic stripes. This is accomplished via a technology known as magnetic secure transmission (MST), which emulates the swipe of a permanent magnet strip past a reader by generating the near-field magnetic waveform directly. LoopPay's developers stated that because of this design, the technology would work with "nearly 90%" of all point-of-sale units in the United States (which excludes terminals that require the card to be physically inserted into a slot in order to function).[1]

On phones, the Samsung Pay menu is launched by swiping from the bottom of the screen. Different credit, debit and loyalty cards can be loaded into the app, and selected by swiping between them on-screen.[4]

In South Korea, Samsung Pay can be used for online payments[5] and to withdraw money on selected banks' ATMs.[6]

In Mainland China, Samsung Pay supports In-app payments, QR code payments (Alipay, and WeChat Pay) and public transportation cards of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities.

In Hong Kong, Samsung Pay can be linked with Octopus cards, called Smart Octopus, to make electronic payments with stored value service for payments in online or offline systems.[7]

In India, Samsung Pay supports the government's UPI / BharatQR.[8] It also supports bill payments via the Bharat Bill Payment System.[2]

In May 2020, Samsung Pay unveiled Samsung Money by SoFi, a mobile-first money management experience that makes available a cash management account and accompanying Mastercard debit card via the Samsung Pay app, in partnership with fintech company SoFi.[9]

Samsung Pay's security measures are based on Samsung Knox and ARM TrustZone technologies; credit card information is stored in a secure token.[4] Payments must be authenticated using a fingerprint scan or passcode.[10][11]

In August 2016, security researcher Salvador Mendoza disclosed a potential flaw with Samsung Pay, arguing that its security tokens were not sufficiently randomized and could become predictable. He also designed a handheld device that could be used to skim magnetic secure transmission tokens, and another which could spoof magnetic stripes on actual card readers using the token. Samsung responded to the report, stating that "If at any time there is a potential vulnerability, we will act promptly to investigate and resolve the issue".[12]

Samsung Pay will not work with devices whose Knox warranty bit is tripped.

Global availability of Samsung Pay

Date (In chronological Order)	Support for payment cards issued in
August 20, 2015	South Korea[13]
September 28, 2015	United States[13][14]
March 29, 2016	China[15][16]
June 2, 2016	Spain[17]
June 15, 2016	Australia[18]
June 16, 2016	Singapore[19]
July 13, 2016	Puerto Rico[20]
July 19, 2016	Brazil[21]
September 28, 2016	Russia[22]
November 8, 2016	Canada[3][23]
February 8, 2017	Thailand[24]
February 24, 2017	Malaysia[25]
March 22, 2017	India[26]
April 27, 2017	Sweden[27]
	United Arab Emirates[28]
May 16, 2017	United Kingdom[29]
May 23, 2017	Switzerland[30]
	Taiwan[31]
May 25, 2017	Hong Kong[32]
September 28, 2017	Vietnam[33]
November 15, 2017	Belarus[34]
January 30, 2018	Mexico[35]
March 22, 2018	Italy[36][37]
April 26, 2018	France[38]
August 21, 2018	South Africa[39][40]
March 23, 2019	Indonesia[41]
January 21, 2020	Kazakhstan[42]
September 20, 2020	Kuwait[43]
October 28, 2020	Germany[44]

In May 2016, it was reported that Samsung was developing a spin-off of the service known as Samsung Pay Mini. This service will be used for online payments only, and is also being targeted as a multi-platform service.[45]

In January 2017, Samsung has confirmed that Samsung Pay Mini will not only work on its Galaxy devices but on other Android phones as well, as long as they are running Android Lollipop or above and have a screen resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels or higher.[46][47]

In June 2017, Samsung launched Samsung Pay Mini and currently available on Galaxy J7 Max/On Max (in India)[48]

Availability is limited not just on the basis of where the payment card is issued, but also on the basis of the phone's region (CSC) code. Thus a phone made for an unsupported region can never use Samsung Pay even if it physically resides in a supported region and has a local SIM card. The rather unrelated error "Connection error. Unable to connect to Samsung Pay temporarily. Try again later." is how Samsung Pay reports this problem.

In June 2020, Samsung announced a partnership between Samsung Pay, Curve and Mastercard for the launch of Samsung Pay Card in the UK and more EE countries where Curve has customers later in 2020.

In digital wallet-based payment systems like PayPal, Apple Pay, AliPay, WeChat Pay, etc. users receive immediate notification of the transaction, but funds are transferred at best in the next business day. The settlement time depends on the payment method chosen by the customer, while for instant payment systems, the funds are transferred within seconds or minutes.

• WeChat Pay
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Microsoft Pay
• LG Pay
• KakaoPay
• Naver Pay