Samsung officially announced the expanded commercial availability of its mobile payments service, as Samsung Pay now works with all major U.S. carriers.
Samsung Pay launched nearly one month ago, arriving as a promising solution to make fast and hassle-free mobile payments. While mobile payments are starting to grow and rival services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay continue to expand as well, Samsung Pay stands out from the crowd thanks to its support for both magnetic strips and contactless NFC payments.
This means that Samsung Pay is compatible with most terminals, both new and existing, which allows consumers to use Samsung's solution at more merchants than Android Pay and Apple Pay. In fact, Samsung boasts that its Samsung Pay works at more merchants than any other mobile payment service.
On the other hand, Samsung Pay works only with credit or debit cards from Citibank, Bank of America, US Bank and American Express.
Samsung Pay works on the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5, but so far Verizon has been absent from the party. While AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular all offered the service, Big Red dragged its feet and only started supporting Samsung Pay now.
Nevertheless, Samsung has now announced that its mobile payments service is now available on all major U.S. wireless networks as of Wednesday, Oct. 21. Owners of the aforementioned smartphones on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular can now download and install the standalone Samsung Pay app from the Google Play store.
"If you are a Verizon user and your phone needs to be updated to work with Samsung Pay, you'll be prompted to download the necessary updates during the application installation process," Samsung explains in a new press release.
Once users update and install the app, simple and straightforward instructions will appear on the handset's display to guide them through the process. From there on, simply inputting the necessary information will allow users to start paying directly from their smartphone at most merchants in the U.S.
"At Samsung, we're all about moving mobile payments from every-once-in-a-while to everywhere," the company further adds.
