Samsung Pay was announced last month during MWC 2015. Unfortunately it seemed that while the feature was announced, it has yet to go live in any market and has yet to be made available for users. However the good news is that if you’re looking forward to the feature, you will be pleased to learn that it is expected to go live in the second half of 2015.
This is according to Samsung Electronics’ Managing Director, Park Jin-Young who revealed this during the company’s recent earnings report. According to Park, the feature will go live in the US and South Korea in the second half of the year, but as for other countries this is something that apparently Samsung is still discussing. As for smartwatch compatibility, kind of like how the Apple Watch can facilitate mobile payments, Samsung will reveal those details at a later date.
At the moment Apple Pay is still only available in the US. However there have been signs and rumors that Apple is planning to expand to markets like Europe, China, and Canada, but nothing has been officially announced yet. Assuming Samsung really does launch in both the US and South Korea in the second half of the year, they would have beaten Apple to the punch in at least one market.
Samsung Pay relies on NFC and MST technology developed by LoopPay. What this means is that essentially their feature will be compatible with nearly all of point-of-sale units in the US, so retail stores adopting the technology should be a relatively painless process.
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