A few weeks ago, Samsung launched its fast growing payment platform, Samsung Pay on the Gear S3 in South Korea. This launch sparked a lot of expectations from other countries as this smartwatch is quite popular globally. After the official launch in South Korea, there were reports from places like Brazil that Samsung Pay is now active on the Gear S3. In the UK however, it appeared that only select Gear S3’s could perform this function and many suspected that the devices which had this feature were probably imported into the UK and not the UK models. All that speculation can now be laid to rest as it is officially confirmed that Samsung Pay is now active on ALL UK Gear S3 smartwatches.
Remember that there were rumors that Samsung Pay will be active in the UK Gear S2 and S3 on the 16th of May but at the time, proper confirmations could not be made because of ambiguity in its availability. We’ve been able to download Samsung Pay onto the UK Gear S3, and can now confirm that the mobile payments system has now touched down in the United Kingdom. For now, we don’t have information regarding Samsung Pay’s compatibility with Gear S2 but we will surely keep you abreast as the events unfold.
Samsung Pay on the Gear S3 is quite easy to use, to make payment on the Gear S3 Classic/Frontier, simply press and hold the “Back” button on the Gear case, select the card rotating bezel and click “Pay”. Samsung Pay utilizes Near Field Communications (NFC) just like other payment platforms. This enables a secured transmission of card information to the retailers. Samsung also uses its patented Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) because some retailers do not have NFC in their system. MST replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported Samsung device to a standard card reader and it works as an alternative to NFC for card terminals that do not have an active NFC. This allows Samsung Pay to function almost anywhere cards are accepted.
