Samsung is not only expanding the geographical scope of its namesake mobile payments service but is also pushing to introduce the service on new hardware devices. Through an official blog post (in Korean), the company has today announced that Samsung Pay is now finally available for Gear S3 owners in South Korea.
Samsung Pay is finally being launched on the Gear S3 smartwatches after months of delay, though the devices were released in their home country back in November of last year. The payment service would’ve made its way to the Gear S3 Classic and Frontier earlier, had the partner financial institutions didn’t take this long to carefully examine and review the service.
The payments service would work instantly if you have the latest version of both Samsung Pay and Samsung Gear apps installed on your Samsung device. The Gear S3 also works with Samsung Pay Mini, which is the company’s version of the payment app for non-Samsung smartphones.
The Gear S3 smartwatch on your wrist further simplifies the contactless payment. You’re no longer required to pull out your mobile device, especially if you have the LTE-capable iteration of the Gear S3, to complete transactions. You just have to place your Gear S3 close to the payment terminal and the watch will automatically do rest of the heavy lifting. The Korean giant has added support four credit card companies, for example — Hyundai, Hana, and Lotte Card. It is expected to introduce support for KB Kookmin Card later this month.
In addition, it is self-evident that the Korean hardware giant has expedited the pace of Samsung Pay’s global expansion process. The company started out by stepping foot into Singapore — an important market in the South-east Asian region. It has since expanded to India as well, where it debuted the payment service with additional features. It integrated the UPI fund transfer system, which is now being heavily marketed by the government and Paytm wallet for the ease of its user base.
Within a couple months of this expansion, Samsung Pay made its entry into the Nordic and Middle Eastern regions with Sweden and United Arab Emirates (UAE) respectively. It also launched its early access program (beta testing) for the payments platform in Hong Kong and Switzerland, which is necessary to test integration of banking partners before an official debut. Samsung is also expanding the reach of its mobile payments system to the United Kingdom by mid-May.
