Verizon Wireless finally showed support for Samsung Pay, a couple of months after the carrier said that it needed time to evaluate the mobile payment service.
Verizon was spotted to be missing in the list of the partner banks and carriers of Samsung Pay back in August, while rivals AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular have already signed up to be able to offer Samsung Pay upon its launch. The non-inclusion of Verizon was confirmed by a support agent for Samsung.
However, Verizon said in a tweet that the carrier will soon be supporting Samsung Pay in compatible smartphones under the carrier, namely the Galaxy S6, the Galaxy S6 Edge, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 Edge+, through a software update that will be released in the future.
Verizon's commitment to Samsung Pay provides a huge boost to Samsung as it expands the rollout of the mobile payment system across the United States.
Samsung Pay was officially launched in the United States on Sept. 28 after the beta trial of the service, which began on Aug. 25. Similar to Apple Pay and Google's Android Pay, Samsung Pay provides users the ability to make both in-store and online purchases through NFC-based payments, with the user having to simply hold their device near the checkout terminal and then authenticating the transaction through means such as a fingerprint scan.
The advantage that Samsung Pay has over Apple Pay and Android Pay, however, is that it is backwards compatible with most swipe-based magnetic terminals that are used in stores all over the world. This is made possible by Samsung's acquisition of mobile payments company LoopPay earlier in the year.
As such, Samsung Pay essentially works in most locations that accept credit card and debit cards, in addition to locations where contactless terminals are now installed.
Verizon, however, has not yet revealed a definite date for the update that will allow subscribers to use Samsung Pay, just as it kept quiet on what kind of evaluation it had to do on the service before it agreed to support it. The good news is that the service is coming to Verizon, with users only have to wait for the mobile payment system to be rolled out.
