Samsung Pay is now live in China

The Samsung Pay global roll-out has moved on another step today, as the mobile payment service is now officially live in China. Samsung has teamed up with China Union Pay (CUP), the only domestic bank card organization in the country, to enable contactless payments from Samsung’s flagship smartphones.

Samsung Pay supports credit and debit cards from nine of China’s major banks so far, including China CITIC Bank, China Construction Bank, China Everbright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, China Minsheng Banking Corp. Ltd, China Merchants Bank, Hua Xia Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Ping An Bank. Support for six additional banks is scheduled for the future too, which includes the Bank of China, Bank of Beijing, Bank of Communications, China Bohai Bank, Industrial Bank, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

To begin with, just the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, and Galaxy Note 5 smartphones will be supported in the country. Samsung also states that some of its mid-range models will be able to use the service in the future, although this might just be through NFC compatibility rather than Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). Perhaps the newly unveiled Galaxy J7 and Galaxy J5 2016 models will be compatible at some point?

MST is of course one of Samsung Pay’s major benefits over services offered by its competitors Apple and Android Pay. This technology included in the company’s past two generations of flagship smartphones allows for payments to be accepted at older magnetic POS card machines, as well as the more modern NFC based units.

After China, Samsung Pay is scheduled to launch in Australia, Brazil, Spain, Singapore, and the United Kingdom later in the year.