The Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic are great Tizen smartwatches and many users have been waiting for them to receive the ability to use the mobile payment service Samsung Pay. This service allows users to use their Smartwatch and not have the need to get their big clunky Smartphone out of their pockets for mobile payments. Initially the launch was thought to be coming soon but then got delayed to an undisclosed date in 2016.
Initially Samsung opened a closed beta for Samsung Pay, which wasn’t heavily advertised, and now it looks like the Samsung Gear S2 Beta program has gone public. A support page has confirmed “Samsung Pay Beta on Gear S2 will be available for anyone with a Gear S2” as of July 18 (yesterday). If you go into the Gear Manager app you can now see the option there.
The Samsung Gear App has to be updated to the latest version and also you need to setup the Samsung Pay (Gear) app from the Galaxy Apps store. Once Installed you need to assign a secure password and then begin adding your loved credit cards. If you have already Samsung Pay setup on your mobile phone you will NOT enjoy setting up your cards again again, as it does not pull this Information that was previously saved.
To use the service all you need to do is lower your wrist to an NFC payment terminal and payment should go through! Keep in mind that this is NFC only as the Gear S2 does not support MST. The beta is only available at this time for the Bluetooth version S2 that are in the US. A wider rollout for the 3G version and other countries is expected in the coming weeks. There will also be an associated firmware update for the Gear S2 3G version before it can use Samsung Pay.
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