Samsung Pay Beta Test In South Korea For A Month-Long Trial

Samsung is beta-testing its mobile payment scheme in its home country, South Korea, during a month-long trial. The Korean tech giant announced Samsung Pay at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March. Samsung has already signed up beta testers to run trials from July 15 to August 20.

Samsung partnered with MasterCard to compete with Apple Pay in the mobile payment space. Samsung Pay will help people to make in-store purchases via contactless payment on their mobile. This service will be available to owners of Samsung Galaxy S6 who have MasterCard account, as reported by RetailWeek.

According to Uber Gizmo, Samsung has probably already tested the feature and this beta testing is conducted to help users understand the function in real life. To encourage spending, Samsung will be rewarding users with 10,000 points who spend more than 50,000 Korean won [$59] using Samsung Pay. Some of the active Samsung Pay users may also be rewarded with 50,000 points. According to Android Headlines, probably these "points" can be used for all sorts of discounts via Samsung Pay.

The service will start its rollout in September. Samsung Pay uses the NFC (Near-Field Communication) chip to identify the compatible registers. It is also using a LoopPay technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission, which makes it backwards compatible. “Samsung’s ‘Knox’ security platform and fingerprint authentication make Samsung Pay transactions highly secure and easy to use," MasterCard chief emerging payments officer Ed McLaughlin told Retail Week.

Android Headlines reported the tech giant claims Samsung Pay is easy to use especially with the new fingerprint sensor on Galaxy S6. Samsung aims to eliminate the possibility of fraud through "tokenisation," which means sensitive card data will be replaced with a unique and secure "token." Furthermore, the company reassures that no personal data or account numbers will be held by the smartphone when making payments.

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