After touting for more than a month wth early access program, Samsung has now officially opened its mobile payment service ‘Samsung Pay’ to everyone in India. Well everyone means anyone with a compatible Samsung smartphone. Also, the company is adding money transfer through UPI (Unified Payment Interface) in the service.
Currently, a limited number of banks support Samsung Pay in India. This includes HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, American Express, Citi and Standard Chartered bank. You can add both credit cards and debit card of these banks to Samsung Pay. You can also link your Paytm wallet account with the service. Samsung Pay is currently exclusive for Samsung devices. The payment service works with Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy A7 (2016), and Galaxy A5 (2016). The recently launched 2017 edition Galaxy A5 and A7 devices are also compatible with Samsung Pay.
How does Samsung Pay work? Those who are hearing about Samsung Pay for the first time, the mobile payment service uses Near Field Communication (NFC) and Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) on your mobile devices to make payments. Once you have added your credit card or debit card to Samsung Pay, you can pay at a store or retail outlet where you usually swipe or tap your card.
For NFC payments to work, the merchant or shop owner need to upgrade their PoS terminal to accept contactless payments. But Samsung Pay also comes with MST support which works with already existing or any PoS terminal which uses swiping your card through the reader. The MST replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported device to a PoS card reader.
Samsung has partnered with Axis Bank for its UPI payment service. The UPI-based transaction remains the same as you do on UPI apps like BHIM or Phonepe. To use UPI payment with Samsung Pay you first need to register for the Samsung Pay UPI virtual ID, which will be something like vaxxa@pingpay. Once registered you can either send or receive money via Samsung Pay. You just need to enter the other persons Samsung Pay UPI virtual ID or IFSC code with the account number and enter the amount your need to send. The money will be transferred directly from your Samsung Pay account to the recipient’s bank account.
To promote the use of Samsung Pay among the users, the company is partnering with merchants to offer exclusive offers. For example, if you use Samsung Pay at Pizza Hut you get 20 percent discount on your food orders. For HDFC customers using their cards on Samsung Pay, will get 5x reward points or 5 percent cash back on each purchase.