Samsung had been teasing Samsung Pay in India for quite some time now, and, it finally started rolling out this service in India earlier this week. While only half a dozen premium Samsung devices are compatible with Samsung Pay right now, this South Korean company is reportedly planning to bring Samsung Pay to other non-premium Samsung smartphones as well.
Samsung Pay, which was rolled out earlier this week to the users registered in the Early Access Program, is currently only compatible with six devices in India, all of which are premium devices packing quite a good hardware under the hood. These devices are Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy A7 (2016) and Galaxy A5 (2016). Well, according to a report by Mashable, Samsung is planning to bring the Samsung Pay service to its non-premium smartphones as well in India.
According to two sources who are familiar with this matter, Samsung is planning to bring Samsung Pay to its non-premium smartphones in India which also include the J series of smartphones. If all goes well, Samsung might also replicate this in other markets as well.
The reason for Samsung now planning to bring its mobile payment service to non-premium smartphones is that the recently manufactured Samsung smartphones in the budget and mid-level segment are capable of supporting Samsung Pay. Even if the fingerprint scanner, which is required for authentication is missing, users can authenticate the transactions using PIN codes.
Also, unlike other payment methods which require PoS terminals supporting NFC, Samsung Pay comes with support for MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) as well which mimics the physical debit/credit card. This is important given the fact that there’s a significant lack of NFC equipped PoS terminals in India.
Besides, low-end non-premium Samsung smartphones receiving support for Samsung Pay would boost the user base of Samsung’s payment solution in India as Samsung has sold millions of units of such models in the country.
By the way, have you tried Samsung Pay yet?
