MasterCard has announced that starting this fall all MasterCard debit, credit and some prepaid card holders will be able to use their cards with Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay will be automatically preloaded on the more recent Samsung mobile devices (Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5) and existing users will be able to get a free download to add Samsung Pay to their devices.
The advantage of Samsung Pay over competition like Apple Pay is that it can be used at stores that accept NFC (near field communication, aka contactless payments) and also via traditional magnetic stripe terminals as well (Apple Pay can only be used at stores that accept NFC payments), this is possible due to their acquisition of LoopPay earlier in February of this year.
The Samsung Pay promotional video (seen below) also shows that they will partner with Visa, American Express and other credit card issuers directly (e.g Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, First Data & Synchrony Bank). I fully expect the competition for mobile payments to heat up in the coming six to twelve months, which likely means we’ll see more promotions from the mobile payment providers and credit card issuers in an effort to gain more market share.
We’ve already seen a few of these promotions for Apple Pay:
I miss those days when Softcard use to give so many promotions. I have saved more than $500 with their promotions till Dec2014. Hoping to see more from Mastercard this time.