Samsung Pay is already proving popular in Korea

Samsung Pay may only have launched in Korea last week, but the mobile payment service is already proving highly popular, according to sources in the South Korean credit card industry. The service apparently logged 10,000 credit and check card registrations on its launch day, which jumped up to around 80,000 cards within the following four days.

According to sources, Samsung Pay is proving particularly popular due to its simplicity and the fact that it can be used with a broad range of existing card readers. While mobile payment methods aren’t new in the country, most rely on NFC-enabled terminals in order to function. Less than 25 percent of affiliated stores work with NFC technology, resulting in stunted adoption. Samsung Pay works with both NFC and existing magnetic strip readers, meaning that almost every payment terminal will work with Samsung’s technology.

“Since Samsung Pay is an MST-enabled service, it can be used in most affiliated stores. I think that it played a decisive role in attracting users.”

Furthermore, customers are apparently happy about the use of a smartphone fingerprint scanner, both for security purposes but also for ease of use. Competing services such as app cards, which use bar and QR codes for payments, have had some success in Korea, but are said to be rather complicated to setup and use.

Samsung Pay is compatible with the Galaxy Note 5, S6, S6 Edge and Edge+ smartphones. The two most recent handsets in the range are said to be off to a strong start in South Korea, partly due to the introduction of Samsung Pay. More than 100,000 handsets had been sold in the country just four days after the products launched.

Samsung will be bringing its mobile payment method to other countries in the coming months. The US is next, with a launch date scheduled for September 25^th, and Samsung has confirmed that the service will be coming to Europe too, but has not specified a release time frame yet.