Samsung introduces Samsung Pay Mini on non-Samsung handsets

Samsung Pay Mini is unveiled in South Korea

Samsung introduces its mobile payment system for Android called Samsung Pay Mini. The service, available only in South Korea to start, will launch in Q1/2017. The Samsung Pay Mini app will support certain features of the original platform, including membership, lifestyle, transportation and online payments. Samsung Pay Mini will also include a Shopping feature that will let customers log in to a shopping mall of supporting retailers and a Samsung Rewards feature that will allow customers to earn points when making purchases. Those interested in the mobile payment system will have to download an app on their Android phone to use it. Samsung Pay Mini allows Android owners to make offline credit card and debit payments using their phone or smartwatch. Unlike Samsung Pay, which is available on Samsung branded phones and watches only, Samsung Pay Mini will work on devices made by other manufacturers. Owners of smartphones with Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher could make credit or debit card payments online.

Analysts even anticipated Samsung Pay Mini would be launched on iOS as well but a couple of months ago it was reported that Apple had rejected the Samsung Pay Mini iOS app.

Unlike Samsung Pay, it seems that Samsung Pay Mini is reserved to online payment. Samsung Pay allows transactions to be made offline at physical merchants through NFC. If a retailer doesn't support NFC, a Samsung Pay user can still make an offline credit or debit payment by using Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). So far, Samsung’s kept MST to its top-tier Galaxy smartphones (the S7 and S7 edge, most recently), although it has previously expressed a willingness to bring the technology to a broader range of handsets in the future.

Samsung said that it is looking at launching the app in other countries, although nothing has been decided.

Since February 6th, a demo version of the Samsung Pay Mini app is be available from the Google Play Store in Korea. Phones running Android 5.0 and higher will be able to use Samsung Pay Mini. The screens on handsets running the app must have a resolution of 720 x 1280 (HD) or higher.

Samsung Pay India launch could happen

The company has started rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #17-05) for the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge in India, reports Ubergizmo. Once the handset is updated to the new firmware and it restarts, users will see a popup message which says “The future of payments is coming soon!”

Samsung is only teasing the launch for customers in India at this point in time. It hasn’t confirmed as yet when the service is going to go live in the country and which banks will initially have support for Samsung Pay.