Samsung Pay

First launched in 2015, the service supports contactless payments using near-field communications (NFC), but also supports magnetic strip-only payment terminals by incorporating magnetic secure transmission (MST) in devices released before 2021. In India, it also supports bill payments.

Service

Samsung Pay was originally developed by the intellectual property of LoopPay, a crowdfunded startup company that Samsung acquired in February 2015 for an estimated $300m, one of the largest acquisitions made by the firm. The service supports both NFC-based mobile payment systems (which are prioritized when support is detected), 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).

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.

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

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.

In India, Samsung Pay supports Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and BharatQR, but for bank accounts only, not via credit cards like Google Pay. It also supports bill payments via the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS).

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.

In June 2022, Samsung Pay was renamed to Samsung Wallet in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Along with the renaming came new features such as the ability to store digital assets and digital keys within the Wallet app. These new features also came to the Samsung Pay app in South Korea, despite it not adopting the new "Samsung Wallet" name.

In Saudi Arabia, Samsung Wallet also supports adding Mada cards in addition to Visa and Mastercard, Mada which is the Saudi Payments Network is a major payment system in Saudi Arabia

In the United Arab Emirates, Samsung Wallet supports Jaywan cards in addition to Visa and Mastercard.