Samsung Pay enters first public tests

By Staff Writers

Jul 17 2015 11:38AM

Apple Pay rival lands in Korea.

Samsung has begun trialling its new mobile payment service in Korea as its prepares for the product's official launch later this year.

The company debuted its rival to Apple Pay in March this year, using the technology it acquired through its purchase of mobile wallet solutions provider LoopPay for its Samsung Pay product.

LoopPay's technology turns existing magnetic stripe readers in point-of-sale (PoS) terminals into contactless receivers, meaning the service can be used in the majority of physical retail stores.

Rather than using near-field communications (NFC) like rivals Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Samsung pay uses the magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology to wirelessly beam the data normally held within a card's magnetic strip to the PoS terminal.

Samsung's new Galaxy S6 smartphone came equipped with capability for the payments service when it launched to the general public in April, but the service is yet to be switched on for phone owners.

The company today revealed it had begun testing Samsung Pay with a select number of users in Korea this week in the lead up to the solution's public launch in the US and South Korea later this year.

It is pushing out an update to select Galaxy S6 customers that will enable them to test out the payments platform.

To use the service, Galaxy S6 owners add one or more cards to the Samsung Pay app by capturing the card's information with the phone's camera, or inputting it manually.

To make a transaction, users hold their phone near the point-of-sale terminal and authenticate the transaction using the Galaxy S6's fingerprint reader. Samsung Pay users also have the option of using a PIN over the fingerprint reader.

The service uses a one-time token instead of a card number for each transaction for security purposes. Samsung said the service is additionally protected by its Knox mobile security platform as well as the Find My Mobile service which allows a user to remotely lock or wipe their device.

The company said the trial was preparation for a full rollout, but is yet to detail when the service will become available to those outside Korea and the US.