Samsung Pay vs Apple Pay

While Samsung Pay has just become available in India, Apple Pay is about to make its debut. Here is a comparison of the features of the two services.

March saw the launch in India of Samsung Pay, the South Korean phone maker’s proprietary digital payments service. The service in simple terms brings payment instruments like debit cards, credit cards and wallets on one platform. Unlike other ‘white-label’ mobile payment solutions, Samsung Pay is compatible with only specified Samsung devices.

Samsung Pay’s main rival Apple Pay is yet to come to in India.

Let us examine the two services. First, Samsung Pay. It allows payment with credit or debit cards without having to use the cards physically. All one needs to do is to add the card details in the Samsung Pay app. Once done, payments can be made at any POS machine without swiping or presenting the card. The system uses Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies to transmit card details to POS machines. In India, most of the older generation POS machines do not support NFC, but with MST support, Samsung Pay can work with these swipe machines as well. What is special about the service in India is that it also supports mobile wallet Paytm and is integrated with the Unified Payments Interface of NPCI.

MST SUPPORT