Samsung plunges into busy India payments market with Samsung Pay

Samsung Electronics has launched its mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, in India, with support for local payments service Paytm as well as the government-backed Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

Samsung Pay enables Paytm users to pay by scanning QR codes, generating one-time codes for merchant payments and also do peer to peer money transfers.

Samsung Pay also provides a mobile payment option built natively on the UPI payment system launched by the National Payments Corporation of India. The Samsung Pay UPI solution is powered by Axis Bank and facilitates peer-to-peer (P2P) transfer of funds between bank accounts on a mobile platform instantly.

Samsung says it has also created a unique digital payment ecosystem by partnering with a number of issuers and card networks, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards and Standard Chartered Bank. Samsung added that Citibank India is in the pipeline.

To launch Samsung Pay, a user needs to swipe up on an eligible Samsung Galaxy smartphone, select the card, authenticate using a fingerprint or PIN and bring the phone near the POS terminal.

Samsung Pay works with the company’s own Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology as well as with NFC. MST replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported Samsung device to a standard card reader – which means that unlike services like Apple Pay that only work with NFC card readers, Samsung Pay will work on the majority of existing POS terminals in India.

Samsung Pay works with three levels of security—fingerprint authentication, card tokenization and Samsung’s mobile security platform, Samsung KNOX.

“Our insights show that convenience, security and acceptance are seen by consumers as the most important influencers when choosing among different digital payment options,” said Asim Warsi, senior vice president of mobile business at Samsung India.

Samsung Pay is currently available on Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy A5 (2016), Galaxy A7 (2016), Galaxy A5 (2017) and Galaxy A7 (2017). Samsung Pay will also be available shortly on the Gear S3 smartwatch.

With its launch in India, Samsung Pay is now available in 12 global markets, including South Korea, the US, China, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Malaysia.