Samsung Pay Mobile Payments Launches in U.S.

Samsung Pay is the ability to use your phone to essentially skip the card swipe process via traditional payments card swipers.  The phone's tech replaces the swipe, thus it will, theoretically, work at all payments terminals.  In reality it is quite effective but doesn't reach 100% and unfortunately Samsung Pay has failed to get many issuers to sign up for the new capability.  That means your favorite card is unlikely to be supported.

Here is a story on the launch by the folks over at The Verge:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/28/9408749/samsung-pay-united-states-launch


Here is a snippet from that piece:

Samsung Pay, the company's answer to Apple Pay, has officially launched today in the United States after a month-long beta program.

In theory, Samsung Pay should be an extremely handy mobile payment service. Alongside NFC payments, it also uses "Magnetic Source Transmission" technology, or MST, which emits the same kind of magnetic code that make credit card readers work. (Samsung acquired the company that pioneered this technology, LoopPay, back in February.) It's an advantage over services like Apple Pay and Android Pay, which primarily rely on NFC technology, which is still not widely available.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant