Samsung Pay Gets Support for Visa Checkout Service, Expanding Scope

Alongside the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the South Korean giant has announced a partnership with Visa to expand the scope of its Samsung Pay mobile payments service. Later this year, Samsung Pay users will be able to use the service online where the Visa Checkout service is accepted. This will help in adoption of Samsung Pay grow quickly around the globe.

Users will be able to click the new Visa Checkout/ Samsung Pay co-branded button and touch the fingerprint sensor and the payment will proceed instantly, without needing to enter a username and password for each purchase. This is mainly going to improve the online shopping experience, where users have to add card information every time they shop. This process looks to eliminate many steps from payment checkout process easing transaction for customers, and leveraging the online business as well. With Visa being accepted at almost all major stores, Samsung Pay will also get deep penetration into the market.

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"We are very excited to be working with Visa to offer simple, fast and secure checkout experiences to millions of Samsung Pay users on their mobile devices or desktop. Our partnership benefits not only Samsung Pay users but also hundreds of thousands of online merchants who are looking for effective ways to increase their checkout conversion rates," Injong Rhee, CTO of the Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics said in a statement.

Samsung Pay was launched in South Korea in late 2015, before moving to the US a month later. Since then, Samsung Pay has expanded to the likes of Australia, Brazil, China, and Russia. It recently also launched in India, bringing the ability to simply make payments with your phone - as long as it’s one of the compatible Galaxy devices. Compatible devices include the Samsung Galaxy Note5, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016), Samsung Galaxy S8, and Samsung Galaxy S8+. It supports both NFC and MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) that allows a user to send a magnetic signal from smartphone to the payment terminal's regular card reader.

Partner banks for Samsung Pay in India include Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Standard Chartered, and American Express. Citibank will become an issuing partner soon, with its credit cards set to be supported in the near future. Furthermore, Samsung Pay users can link their Paytm Wallet to the service as well.

In this week's episode of Orbital, we talk about whether the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ can be the smash hits Samsung needs. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS, or just hit the play button below.