Samsung Pay was first launched in South Korea in July 2015, but the company says they have been working on the Indian version for about a year.

Samsung Pay launches in India for all Android mobile users

SAMSUNG has launched its Samsung Pay mobile payments service in India for owners of its Galaxy smartphone series.

The service was rolled out for selected users a few weeks ago, and is available nationwide from Friday. Unlike the plethora of mobile wallet services available in India, Samsung’s offering supports Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies, according to the Business Standard.

They allow users to directly interface with card terminals rather than having to rely on an Internet connection as most e-wallet solutions do. Users can save the details of their credit and debit cards as well as mobile wallets such as Paytm.

Payments are then authenticated using the phone’s fingerprint scanner. This means users do not have to share security details like their CVV code or pin.

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“The idea is that everything is part of the smartphone. With Samsung Pay, your debit cards, credit cards, mobile wallets will all be in one place,” Samsung Electronics Southwest Asia president and CEO HC Hong told the Financial Express.

Samsung Pay was first launched in South Korea in July 2015, but the company says they have been working on the Indian version for about a year.

“We focused mainly on the barriers which were holding back people from going digital,” Samsung India senior vice-president Asim Warsi told Livemint.

“We picked up the key themes centric to the Indian consumers – technical issues, security concerns and the lack of acceptability presence – and then integrated mobile wallets, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and debit cards to Samsung Pay. The idea was to make in India for Indian consumers.”