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Samsung Pay, the mobile-payments service from Samsung Electronics Co. Inc., has added 14 Visa-MasterCard payment card issuers. In addition, Verizon Wireless, the holdout mobile carrier that was absent from Samsung Pay’s launch a month ago, is now supporting the service, a Samsung executive said Wednesday.
“We’re expanding our ecosystems,” Thomas Ko, co-general manager of Samsung Pay, told attendees at the Money 20/20 payments conference in Las Vegas.
Upcoming bank card issuers include JPMorgan Chase & Co., which has 94 million credit and debit card accounts and announced its own mobile-payment service, Chase Pay, at the same conference. Samsung’s other new issuers are PNC Bank, TD Bank, SunTrust, Fifth Third Bank, Key Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, Security Service Federal Credit Union, Navy Federal Credit Union, Virginia Credit Union, Associated Bank, Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union, and People’s United Bank.
Samsung Pay also will work with Discover Financial Services beginning next year. Plus, consumers with gift cards from dozens of retailers supported by prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. will be able to link those cards to Samsung Pay. Next up for inclusion in the wallet will be membership and loyalty cards, said Ko.
The new issuers will join original partners America Express, Bank of America, Citibank, U.S. Bank, and Synchrony Financial, a store-branded credit card issuer.
Ko also said the five major U.S. carriers now support Samsung Pay: AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon Wireless. Verizon, the largest carrier, was not on the list of mobile network operators supporting Samsung Pay at its launch. “We listened to you,” say Ko, who did not give details about what kind of deal Samsung and Verizon worked out. A Verizon spokesperson could not be reached Wednesday.
After just a month in the market, Samsung Pay is already generating strong repeat use, according to the Korea-based electronics giant. U.S. users have averaged eight transactions so far.
Samsung Pay works with newer Samsung mobile phones and devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, and Galaxy Note5, which run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system and are equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology. In addition to using NFC, as do rival services such as Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay, Samsung Pay uses a second contactless communication technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission. MST lets the Samsung device transmit tokenized card data to ordinary magnetic-stripe payment terminals, which Samsung expects to give Samsung Pay access to up to 90% of existing POS terminals.
Three-fourths of Samsung Pay transactions so far have used MST, Ko said. Samsung obtained the MST technology through its acquisition of LoopPay earlier this year.
The technology could give Samsung Pay an advantage, at least temporarily, over Android Pay and Apple Pay because only a small minority of U.S. POS terminals currently support NFC. The NFC installed base, however, is expected to increase rapidly as the country converts to EMV chip card payments since most EMV terminals are expected to include NFC antennas.
