Samsung has announced that their contactless payment service, Samsung Pay, is now available in Australia. Australia becomes the fourth country that the service has been enabled, joining the ranks of the United States, South Korea and Spain. As you may remember, the service is also coming to Singapore on Friday of this week. While the countries the service is available is limited, Samsung has had a lot of success so far with the service, claiming some 5 million users of Samsung Pay are already registered across the available countries.
“Today’s launch of Samsung Pay offers more than a secure and convenient way for Samsung smartphone owners to pay,” said Prasad Gokhale, Vice President, Mobile Division, Samsung Australia. “It’s the next development for Australians who use their smartphone as the central device to live, organise and enjoy their lives.
“Australia is a market of early technology adopters and by providing a platform open to all partners, ranging from government to financial institutions and retailers, while upholding the highest standards of security and data privacy, Samsung is fueling the transition to a truly digital wallet.”
Users of select Samsung devices in Australia can start using the service today.
Those select devices include the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. Samsung does suggest that there are some carrier dependencies as
You Can Use Samsung Pay on the Galaxy S7
well. In reviewing the Samsung Pay site for Australia, it looks like the S6 line up on Telstra, which will be leveraging NFC for the payment process, will not be ready for this day one.
In Australia, the service is currently supported by Citibank and American Express so in order to use Pay, you will have to have a card from one of these companies. Other credit cards and banks are expected to be added as the service takes hold.
Because of the way Samsung Pay works – leveraging Magnetic Secure Transmission – it can be accepted a significantly larger number of pay terminals than the likes of the NFC secure based Android Pay or Apple Pay. It will even work on non-contactless terminals. It’s a big leg up but, to this point, has only been available on Samsung devices.
Samsung Pay will be expanding further this year. The Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil are all expecting to have the service later this year. That would bring the total number of countries supported to eight. For reference, Android Pay currently is only accepted in the United States and the United Kingdom. Expansion of Android Pay to Australia and Singapore is expected in 2016.
