The Korean electronics giant鈥檚 service was introduced to all users in the US in September 2015 after a brief testing period, but it鈥檚 designed to work on a broader range of payment terminals than either Apple's or Google鈥檚 products.
Samsung鈥檚 system will work with more modern NFC systems, as well as EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) terminals used by chip-based cards that are common in Europe. It can also mimic the magnetic signals generated by card swipes to work with stores that have traditional credit card terminals, the company says.
However, it won鈥檛 work with systems that require a user to physically insert a card into a slot to pay, such as an ATM, gas station, or some vending machines.
The service also has specific limits on what carriers and phones it will support, currently working with only a limited number of Android-based Samsung phones. It鈥檚 also scheduled to work with Samsung鈥檚 Gear S2 smartwatch once it releases, but only for transactions that use NFC, not older technologies, CNET reports.
The service is also designed to work without a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, but only for up to 10 payments, . Adding a card or looking at the transaction history also requires a data connection.
