Samsung Electronics has announced a new mobile payment service called Samsung Pay. It combines what it’s calling Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) - the technology used by its recent acquisition LoopPay - with Near Field Communication (NFC). As a result, it says consumers will be able to use secure mobile payments at ‘nearly all’ merchant locations.
LoopPay produced key fobs and smartphone cases that fooled a magnetic card reader into thinking a card had been swiped through it. In reality, the LoopPay device generated a magnetic field to mimic a card swipe.
This MST technology will now be built into the new Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge smartphones, along with NFC. Consumers will be able to store their existing card details on their smartphone, with payments protected by the fingerprint sensor on the phone.
JK Shin, CEO and Head of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics, said “Samsung Pay will reinvent how people pay for goods and services and transform how they use their smartphones. The secure and simple payment process, coupled with our robust partner network, makes Samsung Pay a truly game-changing service that will bring value to consumers and our partners in the ecosystem.”
Samsung Pay will be launched in the USA and South Korea this summer, with expansion to Europe and China already planned.