What is Samsung Pay?
What is Samsung Pay?
03 September 2019 | Published by David Goulden
Samsung Pay allows you to make payments using a Samsung device. You can store your card details in an e-wallet on your phone, tablet or even smart watch, so you don’t need to use your card or enter your PIN every time you want to make a transaction.
It launched in the UK in May 2017, so it’s relatively new technology, but it’s grown in popularity every year.
How does Samsung Pay work?
It’s essentially a digital wallet that allows you to store your debit and credit card details to your Samsung device. Then, when you are ready to make a payment, you simply:
- Swipe up on the screen to wake the device up. Or you can also use your fingerprint to wake it up if you have this set up.
- Select your preferred card and confirm this with your fingerprint or your unique passcode.
- Hold the device next to the card machine and payment will be made within seconds. It’ll tell you whether it’s been successful.
What is the Samsung Pay limit?
Well, the payment limit is actually set by the merchant, not by Samsung themselves. Which means there isn’t always a fixed £30 transaction like you get with contactless card payments. So how much you can spend will vary depending on where you shop.
What technology does it use?
Samsung Pay uses two different types of technology. These are:
Near Field Communication technology
More commonly referred to as NFC, this uses radio waves to transfer information between your Samsung device and the card machine.
It only works within a few centimetres of the machine and device though, so there is no danger of accidentally making a payment or paying for someone else's stuff!
Magnetic strip technology
Also called MST support, this is something unique to Samsung Pay as Apple and Android Pay do not have it. This allows you to make a payment if NFC isn’t available. It works using a signal, similar to when you swipe a credit or debit card, allowing the device and card machine to speak to each other.
At takepayments, all of our card machines come with NFC as a standard.
What security does Samsung Pay use?
Samsung uses it’s very own security system called Knox technology to protect your details when making a payment. This is done through something called tokenisation, which changes customers’ card details into a series of random numbers and letters. These are then safely stored in a secure data vault.
More importantly, as it has been tokenised, this information cannot be changed back into its original form. So no one would able to get the original card details or even link them back to you if they were to steal your device.
To make a payment, a Samsung device needs user authentication, which comes from a fingerprint, PIN number or even an iris scan in some cases!
How to accept Samsung Pay?
All of our card machines are ready to take Samsung Pay, so you can get going as soon as your card machine is delivered.
Get your free quote here.
