Samsung Pay Arrives in Europe, Spain is Numero Uno

Samsung Pay Service Arrives in Spain

Samsung Pay, marking the service’s European debut has ultimately arrived in Spain. Samsung Pay tends to see customers adding credit or debit cards to their phone, similar to rival services like Apple Pay and Android Pay, where the latter had recently arrived in the UK, which can then be tapped on checkouts in making contactless payment. Samsung Pay is launched in Spain which gives the mobile payment service a lead over the other competitors. In Contrast to those services, it could be utilised with the older magnetic strip systems. Samsung had mentioned that in Europe, the first bank to get on board were CaixaBank and imaginBank, followed shortly with Abanca and Banco Sabadell. Celestino Garcia, corporate vice president of Samsung Spain, had stated that the opportunity for Samsung Pay in Spain was important owing to the high smartphone penetration rate as well as the digitalisation of the banking sector. He mentioned results of a company commissioned research which showed 60% of the people in Spain preferred using services like Samsung Pay that enabled them to make contactless payment. A Visa report of 2015 indicated that Spain seems to be a country where most of the contactless payments terminals in Europe are made.

Turning Point in Payment Behaviour

Garcia had said that they are proud that Spain seems to be the first European market in introducing Samsung Pay, which is an advanced new service, believed to mark a turning point in Spaniard’s payment behaviour as well as the evolution of the payment market as a whole. Samsung Pay was launched in September 2015, in the US and in February the company had stated that it had 5 million registered customers of Samsung Pay, claiming a `strong’ adoption rate in the US as well as South Korea.A company spokesman had mentioned in a statement that `Samsung Pay would launch later in the year in the UK. Samsung Pay is available on the flagship smartphones of Samsung, the Galaxy S7 and S6 series, in Spain as in other markets. Samsung has mentioned that it had chosen Spain as its first European market due to high rates of smartphones together with credit card access. As per research commissioned by the South Korean tech giant, 64% of Spanish customers tend to utilise cards for paying most or several of their purchases.

Samsung Pay, Advantage Over Apple Pay/Android Pay

However, Samsung Pay could be missing a main feature in Spain and as Android Authority summaries, the announcement of Samsung had not made any mention of magnetic secure transmission- MST terminals only that it functioned with near-field communication – NFC enabled contactless payment terminals. In January, CaixaBank said that it would not support Samsung Pay’s MST since contactless point-of-sale systems were already well-known in Spain. Samsung Pay tends to have an advantage over Apple Pay and Android Pay in the United States, on utilising MST, since the stores do not have to install new NFC-enabled terminals in the stores to accept it. On the contrary, Samsung Pay tends to work by sending a signal that imitates the magnetic strips on credit cards to a MST terminal which most of the stores accepting cards tends to have it already. TechCrunch had asked Samsung Pay if the mobile payment service had been incompatible with MST in Spain