Samsung Pay crosses 1 million users

Samsung’s mobile payment solution is increasing in popularity in the company’s home market, with Samsung reporting that Samsung Pay has now crossed 1 million users in the two months since it launched in Korea.

[related_videos title=”Samsung Pay handsets:” align=”left” type=”custom” videos=”651062,643941,638334,637995,634294,623586″]According to the company, the increase in users has seen average daily payments exceed 100,000 and users find that Samsung Pay is the perfect way to settle small bills in convenience and/or department stores, supermarkets and restaurants. The increase in daily transactions has also seen an increase in average payments per day from $705,000 (800 million won) to $1.8 million (2 billion won) and cumulative payments exceeding 100 billion won ($88 million).

Mobile payments is proving to be a fast-growing category, with Samsung joining the likes of Apple and Google getting involved in m-commerce. Apple Pay was arguably the first mainstream mobile payment solution and Samsung closely followed, although it’s taken several months to launch. With its new Android Marshmallow OS, Google has sought to make Android Pay a big challenger in the market and while we’re yet to see a mass rollout, it’s likely to be in the very near future.

Where Samsung Pay has the potential to be better than its competition is in its technology; while all m-payment solutions support payments via NFC – which replicates the experience of using a contactless payment card – Samsung Pay is the only to support MST (Magnetic Security Transmission), which allows it to be used at almost all retailers. Using Apple Pay or Android Pay requires retailers to support contactless payments but MST means Samsung Pay can be used with any retailer who supports either NFC or swipe cards.

At the moment, Samsung pay can be used for both, offline and online payments (using a Samsung card), as well as Cash withdrawals at Woori Bank ATMs. Samsung plans to extend the functionality of Samsung Pay by adding support for membership and transport cards before the end of this year. We’re yet to see how well Samsung Pay does outside of its home market but it’s likely that Samsung will launch its global rollout in the coming months.