Not too long after its Australian announcement and the company disclosing it has more than one Australian bank on board — already making it the equal of bitter rival Apple’s equivalent service — we now know when Samsung Pay will launch in Australia. And it’s only a week away.
Samsung Pay Already Has More Than One Aussie Bank On Board
Samsung Pay will launch into Australia on June 15th, with the news revealed as Samsung Australia sent out an invitation to journalists for a press conference on that date. A hands-on demonstration at the event means that local infrastructure is almost certainly in place, so a widespread customer launch is likely to be imminent or immediate.
American Express and Citibank are expected to be at least two of Samsung Pay’s local launch partners, since representatives will be in attendance; while Citibank has both Visa and Mastercard offerings, it’s not certain that both kinds of cards will be supported by Samsung Pay. The service also supports loyalty and gift cards, but no local partners have been confirmed for Australia yet.
Samsung Pay will work on both Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, and other recent Samsung phones including the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy A5 and A7. The Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+ also support Samsung Pay internationally, but it’s not confirmed whether Australian phones will be updated to operate the service.
The unique selling point of Samsung Pay internationally is that both the service itself and the hardware in supported phones not only includes NFC/RFID chips for contactless payment, but can also function as a virtual magnetic stripe card through Magnetic Stripe Technology (MST). Samsung Pay is secured and activated using phones’ fingerprint readers, so is theoretically less prone to skimming or unauthorised use than a NFC-enabled card.