Samsung Pay announced on April 19 that it is going to extend support to the US mobile payments market. It is online now in China and its launch in UK and Australia is expected to arrive soon. The company has also said that Samsung Pay will be brought to some of its mid-range Smartphones this year.
According to android authority, Samsung Pay is now going to support debit and credits cards from Regions Bank and TD Bank. After this announcement, the total number of banks and credit unions supported by Samsung Pay went up to 130. It also included 60 Visa and MasterCard banks, which is a part of 75 percent of the US market! Keeping in mind that this service was launched only in March (with about 70 institutions on board), this is a huge achievement. Here, the full list of financial partners of Samsung Pay is available.
The Apple Pay supports 90 percent of US banks but the support is just half of the requirements that want to make mobile payments useful and successful. A special feature of Samsung Pay is that it uses magnetic strip and EMV for transactions. This is unlike Apple and Android Pay that rely on NFC payment terminals and smart devices completely to make transactions. This feature of Samsung Pay helps it work with older payment terminals and card machines which do not support the newer NFC standard.
Even with this unique payment system, Samsung has not yet been able to beat Apple in terms of the number consumers using its service. To be precise, Apple Pay has over 12 million users while Samsung Pay has about 5 million customers, but Apple Pay has been on the market for a longer time yet Samsung Pay and Android Pay are continuing to grow faster.