Samsung Pay off to strong start

Samsung Pay is scheduled to launch in the United States on 28 September, with plans to bring the service to the UK, Spain and China in the near future. Perhaps some of those Samsung Galaxy S6 owners have forgotten that their phone came with the promise of Samsung Pay support when it launched back in April. Last month, it got the ball rolling first in its home country, where it is reporting positive adoption numbers.

Over 1.5 million Samsung Pay transactions have so far been accepted by South Korean merchants and of that number around 60% have taken place using the Galaxy Note 5 phablet. As such, Samsung is updating its mobile payment app with new features and tweaks to improve the user experience ahead of the full roll out.

A concern for Samsung is that most of the U.S consumers are using Apple’s devices.

Whilst Apple clearly has the first mover advantage over both Samsung and Android, Samsung Pay has one key technological advantage in the shape of Magnetic Secure Transmission. The company claims this will allow Samsung Pay to work with over 90 percent of the world’s retailers. As it is a hardware issue, it is not easy to transfer those capabilities to older models. Google has not released any apps for Samsung’s other Tizen watches, and the search giant has a vested interest in seeing the platform fail. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are also carrying out such services in U.S. So it won’t be an easy task for Samsung to make a mark in the crowded digital payment market as soon as possible.