Samsung Pay (stylized as SΛMSUNG Pay) is a mobile payment and digital wallet service, operated by the South Korean company Samsung Electronics. It lets users make payments using compatible smartphones and other Samsung-produced devices, accessed using the Samsung Wallet app.

First launched in 2015, the service supports contactless payments using near-field communications (NFC), but also supports magnetic strip-only payment terminals by incorporating magnetic secure transmission (MST) in devices released before 2021. In India, it also supports bill payments.

Service

Samsung Pay was originally developed by the intellectual property of LoopPay, a crowdfunded startup company that Samsung acquired in February 2015 for an estimated $300m, one of the largest acquisitions made by the firm. The service supports both NFC-based mobile payment systems (which are prioritized when support is detected), as well as those that only support magnetic stripes. This is accomplished via a technology known as magnetic secure transmission (MST), which emulates the swipe of a permanent magnet strip past a reader by generating the near-field magnetic waveform directly. LoopPay's developers stated that because of this design, the technology would work with "nearly 90%" of all point-of-sale units in the United States (which excludes terminals that require the card to be physically inserted into a slot in order to function).

On phones, the Samsung Pay menu is launched by swiping from the bottom of the screen. Different credit, debit and loyalty cards can be loaded into the app, and selected by swiping between them on-screen.

In South Korea, Samsung Pay can be used for online payments and to withdraw money on selected banks' ATMs.

In Mainland China, Samsung Pay supports In-app payments, QR code payments (Alipay, and WeChat Pay) and public transportation cards of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities.

In Hong Kong, Samsung Pay can be linked with Octopus cards, called Smart Octopus, to make electronic payments with stored value service for payments in online or offline systems.

In India, Samsung Pay supports Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and BharatQR, but for bank accounts only, not via credit cards like Google Pay. It also supports bill payments via the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS).

In May 2020, Samsung Pay unveiled Samsung Money by SoFi, a mobile-first money management experience that makes available a cash management account and accompanying Mastercard debit card via the Samsung Pay app, in partnership with fintech company SoFi.

In June 2022, Samsung Pay was renamed to Samsung Wallet in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Along with the renaming came new features such as the ability to store digital assets and digital keys within the Wallet app. These new features also came to the Samsung Pay app in South Korea, despite it not adopting the new "Samsung Wallet" name.

In Saudi Arabia, Samsung Wallet also supports adding Mada cards in addition to Visa and Mastercard, Mada which is the Saudi Payments Network is a major payment system in Saudi Arabia

In the United Arab Emirates, Samsung Wallet supports Jaywan cards in addition to Visa and Mastercard.

Security

Samsung Pay's security measures are based on Samsung Knox and ARM TrustZone technologies; credit card information is stored in a secure token. Payments must be authenticated using a fingerprint scan or passcode.

In August 2016, security researcher Salvador Mendoza disclosed a potential flaw with Samsung Pay, arguing that its security tokens were not sufficiently randomized and could become predictable. He also designed a handheld device that could be used to skim magnetic secure transmission tokens, and another which could spoof magnetic stripes on actual card readers using the token. Samsung responded to the report, stating that "If at any time there is a potential vulnerability, we will act promptly to investigate and resolve the issue".

Samsung Pay will not work with devices that have compromised Knox security.

Availability

Global availability of Samsung Pay

Supported countries

Date (In chronological Order)Support for payment cards issued inSamsung Wallet availability
August 20, 2015South Korea South Korea
September 28, 2015United States United States
March 29, 2016China China
June 2, 2016Spain Spain
June 15, 2016Australia Australia
June 16, 2016Singapore Singapore
July 13, 2016Puerto Rico Puerto Rico
July 19, 2016Brazil Brazil
September 28, 2016Russia
November 8, 2016Canada Canada
February 24, 2017Malaysia Malaysia
March 22, 2017India India
April 27, 2017Sweden Sweden
United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates
May 16, 2017United Kingdom United Kingdom
May 23, 2017Switzerland Switzerland
Taiwan Taiwan
May 25, 2017Hong Kong Hong Kong
September 28, 2017Vietnam Vietnam
November 15, 2017Belarus Belarus
March 22, 2018Italy Italy
April 26, 2018France France
August 21, 2018South Africa South Africa
March 23, 2019Indonesia Indonesia
January 21, 2020Kazakhstan Kazakhstan
September 20, 2020Kuwait Kuwait
October 28, 2020Germany Germany
August 23, 2022Qatar Qatar
October 31, 2022Denmark Denmark
Finland Finland
Norway Norway
December 11, 2022Bahrain Bahrain
April 28, 2024Oman Oman
December 9, 2024Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia
February 25, 2025Japan Japan
October 27, 2025Poland Poland

In May 2016, it was reported that Samsung was developing a spin-off of the service known as Samsung Pay Mini. This service will be used for online payments only, and is also being targeted as a multi-platform service.

In January 2017, Samsung has confirmed that Samsung Pay Mini will not only work on its Galaxy devices but on other Android phones as well, as long as they are running Android Lollipop or above and have a screen resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels or higher.

In June 2017, Samsung launched Samsung Pay Mini which is currently available on Galaxy J7 Max/On Max phones (in India).

Availability is limited not just on the basis of where the payment card is issued, but also on the basis of the phone's country-specific code (CSC). Thus, a phone made for an unsupported region can never use Samsung Pay even if it physically resides in a supported region and has a local SIM card. The rather unrelated error message "Connection error. Unable to connect to Samsung Pay temporarily. Try again later." is how Samsung Pay reports this problem.

In June 2020, Samsung announced a partnership between Samsung Pay, Curve and Mastercard for the launch of Samsung Pay Card in the UK and more EE countries where Curve has customers later in 2020.

From September 2021, Samsung Pay Mini was made available for the Galaxy A and Galaxy M series.

Compatible devices

Flagship smartphones

Galaxy S

Galaxy Note

Galaxy Z

Mid-range smartphones

Galaxy A

Galaxy M

Galaxy J

  • Samsung Galaxy J5 & J7 (2016)
  • Samsung Galaxy J5 (2017)/J5 Pro
  • Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)/J7 Pro
  • Samsung Galaxy J7 Max (2017)

Galaxy C and others

Available to Samsung Pay users within Hong Kong, Macau and China.

Smartwatches

See also