After months of testing, Samsung Pay, the tech giant’s answer to Apple Pay, officially launched today in the US.
While it is an overall great tool, there are still some limitations that need to be addressed before its true potential is utilized.
Samsung pay is a new mobile payment service app that is available for the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge and Edge+, and the Note 5.
The app can be found in the Samsung App Store; opening it will prompt you to install an update, which will activate it.
Almost all of the major carriers support it, the one exception being Verizon, which says that it is “in the process of evaluating Samsung Pay.”
As with Apple Pay and other similar services, it uses NFC technology to make payments from your device in a variety of public places.
However, it also uses “Magnetic Source Transmission” technology, or MST, which emits the same kind of magnetic code that make credit card readers work.
This is good news for consumers, because MST is available everywhere, unlike NFC, which is only in select stores/markets.
What is not such good news is that even though the technology can be used everywhere, due to certain limits the service cannot be used everywhere just yet.
To start, the service is only available on the newest devices, so those with older phones are out of luck at this time.
More importantly though, it only works with a credit or debit card from Visa, MasterCard, or American Express card that has been issued by one of just a few banks: Bank of America, Citi, American Express, and US Bank.
It will also work with customer loyalty cards.
Although the banks used are some of the top in the nation, they are far from the only ones, which means a substantial section of the market may be unable to use the service as of now.
To truly accommodate its users, the company will need to expand the cards and issuing banks that can be used for it to really work for everyone.
They will also need to look into a way of allowing customers with older phones to access this feature.
What do you think of the new Samsung Pay service?
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