Samsung Pay expanding to Australia, Singapore and Brazil after the UK, Spain and China

Samsung isn’t resting on its laurels where Samsung Pay is concerned. At CES 2016 the company announced that Samsung Pay will be expanding to three more countries in the coming months: Australia, Singapore and Brazil. This announcement follows hot on the heels of the confirmation that China, Spain and the United Kingdom will receive the service in Q1, 2016.

There was no specific timeline put on the launches for each country but it clearly demonstrates how aggressively Samsung is pushing its touchless payment system. These six countries will join the U.S. and South Korea where the payment system is already in place. The Gear S2 will also have its Samsung Pay functionality enabled in the coming months.

Not surprisingly, Samsung focused on the fact that Samsung Pay works with both newer NFC-equipped terminals as well as the older magnetic stripe terminals that use Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology. According to Samsung, the older MST terminals outnumber the NFC version by five to one. Both Apple Pay and Android Pay only work with newer NFC terminals.

Samsung acquired the company that invented MST last year. Samsung Pay uses a modulating magnetic field that can be read by older magnetic stripe readers in the same way as a card swipe. The good news about this is that it means you can use Samsung Pay in a lot more places; the bad news is that it doesn’t exactly encourage retailers to update their terminals.

Do you use Samsung Pay? How easy are you finding it to use?