Finally, Samsung Pay has rolled out on Verizon Wireless, meaning the mobile payment solution is now available to wireless customers on all major networks.
AT&T, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, T-Mobile and now Verizon support Samsung Pay on the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note5. The app is available as a free download in the Google Play store.
When JK Shin, CEO and head of IT & mobile communications at Samsung Electronics, announced the mobile payment system in March, he said it would reinvent how people pay for goods and services and transform how they use their smartphones.
The solution rolled out on September 28 — although not on Verizon at that point — right about the same time Google released Android Pay, a successor to the Google Wallet mobile payment system. With this announcement, Samsung could pick up some momentum.
What Sets Samsung Apart
Samsung launched with major payment networks like MasterCard and Visa on board, but so did Android Pay, which Google started rolling out last week. Samsung Pay and Android Pay, in fact, both have strong and growing ecosystems with key financial partners like American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank to provide greater flexibility, access, and choice for customers while enabling simple and secure payment experiences.
According to the company, Samsung Pay has the potential to be accepted at approximately 30 million merchant locations worldwide. Out of the gate, consumers with Android Pay installed on their smartphones can pay for goods at over 1 million locations in the U.S.
Samsung boasts a technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). Consumers can use Samsung Pay in merchant locations regardless of whether the terminals support NFC (near field communication) or traditional magnetic stripe technology, which is supported by the vast majority of existing terminals. Samsung Pay also offers thumb recognition, as do Apple Pay and Android Pay.
Mobile Payment Competition Rising
We caught up with Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst in Atlanta, to get his thoughts on the mobile payments scene. He told us mobile payments will be very important going forward, but we are still in the very early stages today. Nevertheless, players large and small are jockeying for position.
“Apple Pay, Google Pay and now Samsung Pay are competitors in the same space. Others like Currentc are also going to enter the space,” Kagan said. “This is going to be a very crowded and very competitive market.”
Kagan predicted that consumers may be using smartphones instead of physical wallets, keys and credit cards by 2020. Today, however, we are merely witnessing the first fruits of the transformation.
“Right now, we are not going to be able to tell which companies are the winners and losers long term. It’ll take a while before we have any idea,” Kagan said. “But the next several years is going to be the Wild Wild West and it’s going to be a very exciting time in the mobile payments space.”
