Samsung is partnering with financial services giant MasterCard for the launch of its mobile payment service, Samsung Pay, in Europe later in the year. Samsung Pay which was announced earlier this year, is already under testing in Korea and is expected to be available in a handful of markets by the fourth quarter of the year. This includes the United States and of course Korea itself. Canada, China and Europe are expected to follow suit.
By connecting to the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) platform, financial institutions and other credit and debit card issuers will be able to activate cards for use with Samsung Pay. Users only need to add their cards to the service and the system takes it from there. What the partnership with MasterCard brings to the table is making this very seamless as the whole point of Samsung Pay and rival services like Apple Pay is to eliminate the need to walk around with a wallet full of credit, debit and other cards. This also means that from the word go, the service should be available to a large number of users as most cards should be compatible.
MasterCard is already Samsung’s key partner in matters Samsung Pay at least in the United States where it will be providing tokenization services to Samsung Pay once the service goes live through the aforementioned MDES platform.
Samsung Pay will only be available on compatible smartphones like the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge and has an edge over its rivals in that it supports both old magnetic stripe terminals (MST) and new contactless terminals (that use near field communication – NFC) hence tapping into businesses that haven’t updated their terminals as well as those that are ready for the new era of mobile payments.
