Samsung Pay was announce March 2015, as the new era of mobile payments and e-commerce, while basically coming out as a competitor to other existing payment platforms. The full launch is expected to be viewed this September.

The pattern is simple – credit card is entered into the app; when conducting the payment you choose the card, tap the phone to the terminal and then the authentication is done through the fingerprint sensor. Due to the last feature the list of supported devices is the following: Samsung Galaxy S6; Galaxy S6 Edge; Galaxy S6 Edge Plus and Galaxy Note 5. But the list is expected to get broader.

Special attention is triggered towards US, where Samsung Pay will be launched on the 28th of September, while one week ago it was available still only in Korea. So far around 80 thousand people registered their cards on Samsung Pay. As of now the system supports Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and US Bank, and all the carriers in US apart from Verizon.

The compatible feature of Samsung Pay is that they have implemented the Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology into the system, which Apple pay for example doesn't have. The idea is – the system fools classic magnetic stripe card reader technology into thinking a physical card is being swiped, while it's actually a digital signal. This is in order to work as with the new terminals that use Near Field Communication (NFC), so as the old, that are magnetic.

In the nearest future it is expected for Samsung Pay to come to Europe.

Sources:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/mobile-wallet-guide,news-20666.html
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_begins_samsung_pay_closed_beta_testing_in_the_us-blog-13722.php
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/apple-pay-vs-samsung-pay
http://www.samsung.com/uk/news/local/samsung-announces-samsung-pay-a-groundbreaking-mobile-payment-service