Samsung rolled out its Samsung Pay services in Australia around June last year with the services becoming available only to Citibank credit card cardholders as well as American Express Issued Card Members. Before now, holders of Citibank debit cards could not use the payment platform on their compatible devices but Samsung has announced a new development in that regard. Citibank debit card users are now eligible to access Samsung Pay with their debit cards in Australia.
This latest addition is an obvious sign that the payment platform is expanding. While Samsung Pay presently boasts of having up to 870 bank relationships across the world, with over 240 million transactions processed in the last 18 months, the payment service in Australia had been limited to only American Express and Citibank credit card holders since launch. But Westpac became the first of the Big Four banks in Australia to support Samsung Pay last month with support for both its debit and credit card holders and now, Citibank’s debit cards are onboard.
Samsung Pay app has also got more compatible devices on which it can be used in the Australia. When it first rolled out, only the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge were supported. The Samsung Gear S3 and S2 wearables are also compatible with Samsung Pay in Australia and are in fact, the only Tizen-powered devices which are compatible with the payment platform. With the launch of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, both new smartphones are now supported in the region. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ both comes with a new biometric authentication method using the iris scanner technology in addition to the fingerprint authentication method already available.
The additional support for Citibank debit cards may be connected to the recent integration of terminals using MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) technology in addition to terminals using NFC (Near Field Communication) technology which Samsung Pay only supported in the past. This has expanded the scope of the service and makes Samsung Pay services possible for use on terminals which support the magnetic stripe card technology found on debit and credit cards.
Related News
