Samsung Pay Ready to Go Live on September 28

“It is easy, safe, and most importantly, available virtually anywhere you can swipe a card, in most cases without new costs for merchants, from day one”, said JK Shin, CEO and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. Now it will launch on Samsung’s two newest phones, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+.

To show us how easily Samsung Pay works for both customers and merchants, some Samsung representatives took a bunch of reporters to a Dunkin Doughnuts to buy a banana with Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay provides back end integration with a variety of different credit and debit cards along with private label cards, gift cards and so forth.

Promotions/Rewards: In the future, Samsung will be introducing features to allow users to opt-in to promotions and deals by sharing their information. From there, you can choose to authenticate your purchase by typing in a PIN or by pressing your fingerprint on the home button.

A statement from Samsung Australia this morning said that the company was “working with local financial institutions to customise Samsung Pay with an anticipated launch in 2016”.

Instead of exchanging credit card details with a terminal, Samsung Pay uses tokenization to pass along a temporary code, a system found in other contactless payment systems. Samsung’s Global Co-GM of Samsung Pay Thomas Ko was keen to reassure me that these antennas are neatly placed away from all other radios within its phones to avoid interference that might otherwise create security holes.

Indeed, the payment process with Samsung Pay was faster than the process of getting 15 reporters in and out of a cramped coffee shop. We’ll have to wait and see if custom ROMs manage to get around this limitation or if only manufacturers get the green light for their official tweaks to Android. The service’s ease of use is unparalleled, even by the charmingly simplistic Apple Pay.

Despite promises of wide acceptance with the magnetic technology, Samsung Pay won’t be universal. Samsung may not have the advantage for long since most businesses are expected to upgrade to credit card terminals that will work with Apple and Android.

Your card also needs to be from a bank that has signed on.

A US appeals court will not reconsider an earlier decision finding that Samsung violated Apple patents.