Mobile Payments Titan Samsung Pay Turns Three Amid Milestones

Samsung Pay has come a long way since it started back in August 2015. From Hannibal Buress showing us just how easy it is to use to the very latest pushes, Samsung Pay is showing up in an ever-increasing number of places. Now available on six continents and in 24 markets, Samsung Pay has turned over a series of milestones including its latest: passing the 1.3 billion total transactions mark.

Described as “simple, safe, and available almost anywhere the user swipes or taps their card,” Samsung Pay delivers this kind of capability via its use of Near Field Communications (NFC) coupled with its own system known as Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). The combination opens up the possibility to pay at a host of merchant locations measured, at last report, in the millions.

Not only does Samsung Pay allow for mobile payments, it can also offer online payments in 15 different markets, including Australia, Brazil and Thailand. It can be used for ATM transactions and transit cards in five different markets, as well as loyalty and membership card use in 20 markets. It offers transaction history tracking via the Pay Planner system, and integration with the Bixby system for faster payments with some merchants.

Word from Samsung Electronics’ president and CEO of the IT and mobile communications division, DJ Koh notes that future plans involve the further pursuit of strategic partnerships as well as augmentations of available services.

The news isn’t all good for Samsung Pay, of course; a look at Statista suggests that Apple Pay has been outpacing Samsung Pay in audience size by better than two to one, and has done so for each of the last three years. It also doesn’t even crack the top five payment apps preferred by affluent US users. At the same time, though, it doesn’t need to be on top to serve its purpose: it’s providing Samsung device users with one more reason to use, and keep using, Samsung devices. The fact that these uses also contribute cash back to Samsung—payment processing and all—is icing on the cake.

Still, Samsung has done quite well for itself, and likely by its fourth birthday, we’ll hear even more about what this mobile payments platform is doing in the field.