Samsung Pay will launch with AmEx in India

We all know that Samsung is officially launching their digital payments service, 'Samsung Pay' in India. We reported earlier that Samsung is currently testing the service in India and has pushed the Samsung Pay app along with the the latest firmware update to Galaxy Note 5. We now learn that Samsung has tied up with American Express (AmEx) to launch the service and the partnership with card giants like 'MasterCard' and 'Visa' is also in the plan.

One important thing to note is that not all of Samsung's phones are equipped with Samsung Pay. The feature is limited to the high-end phones like Galaxy S6 and the most recent models in the Galaxy series. According to market research firm 'Counterpoint', there are about 2.5 million Sammy phones in India that support the Samsung Pay technology.

While that's a good base to start with; it's going to be harder for Samsung to make Samsung Pay compete with the likes of PayTM; which grew tremendously during the last 2 months because of demonetization initiative of the Indian Government. That said, Samsung Pay has a very big advantage over its chief rival - Apple Pay. Samsung Pay works with regular swipe machines using 'MST' technology while Apple Pay requires NFC capable terminals. Not requiring merchants to setup a new machine would definitely give Samsung more power to capture the markets in India.



It will take a while before the merchants and buyers are ready to use Samsung Pay; and even Apple Pay; but the real challenge is increasing the spread of phones and smart wear equipped with MST / NFC technologies.

Do you think India is ready for Samsung Pay or Apple Pay? Let us know what you think.

Source: Mashable