Samsung Has announced that Singapore will get the Samsung pay support in the second quarter of this year. This makes Singapore the third Asian country and the first in the Southeast Asia to support the popular mobile payment service from Samsung. Samsung Pay is already available in China, United States and Samsung’s Home Country South Korea.
“We are extremely excited that Singapore is the first market in Southeast Asia to roll out Samsung Pay,” said Injong Rhee, EVP and Head of R&D, Software and Services of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. “Singapore’s connectivity and openness are ideal conditions for our new mobile service to thrive, together with the interest and readiness of consumers here in adopting this new method of payment.”
To make this possible, Samsung is partnering with payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard associated with banks like DBS/POSB, OCBC Bank, and Standard Chartered.
As for the devices, currently, the Galaxy S6 family, S7 family and Note 5 are supported with the support for additional devices such as the Galaxy A5, A7, and A9 coming shortly.
Samsung Pay was initially seen as a copy to the Apple Pay, but it quickly went onto become the most popular mobile payment service beating the likes of Apple Pay and Android pay. This was possible because Samsung used a technology called as MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) that mimics your credit card while making a transaction on a regular credit card swiping terminal all the while securing and encrypting your information. This gives the Samsung pay the ability to work virtually anywhere.
Apple Pay and Android pay require a special NFC terminal to make the payment for the purchase.
Almost 71% of the people who took a survey indicated that they were excited to use the service once it is available.
