Samsung Pay launches in the United States
Samsung has launched its tokenised mobile payment system, ‘Samsung Pay’, in the US, which ﻿supports contactless NFC and MST based payment technology, to enable consumers to swipe or tap their ﻿credit card to perform a payment﻿. The technology is supported by debit and card providers Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, and is also supported by US banks Bank of America, Citigroup, and US Bank﻿; m﻿ore partnerships are expected over time. Samsung Pay will now  join the battle for the mobile payments space in the US﻿ with Google's Android Pay and Apple Pay. This comes after Samsung's recent announcement that in the first month of its service being available in South Korea, $30m of transactions were performed via its platform.

Samsung Pay, the company's answer to Apple Pay, has officially launched today in the United States after a month-long beta program.

In theory, Samsung Pay should be an extremely handy mobile payment service. Alongside NFC payments, it also uses "Magnetic Source Transmission" technology, or MST, which emits the same kind of magnetic code that make credit card readers work. (Samsung acquired the company that pioneered this technology, LoopPay, back in February.) It's an advantage over services like Apple Pay and Android Pay, which primarily rely on NFC technology, which is still not widely available.

On the security side of things, Samsung Pay uses what's known as "tokenization." Every time you make a payment, your actual credit card information isn't sent to the terminal, rather your phone will use a temporary one that the credit card company creates for you. Samsung Pay is a very capable service, but there are some limits

Samsung Pay may be more capable than other competing services, but its availability has some limits. First, it's only built into Samsung's newest devices: the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge and Edge+, and the Note 5. You also need a credit or debit card from Visa, MasterCard, or American Express card, and it has to be issued by one of just a few banks: Bank of America, Citi, American Express, and US Bank are available at launch. (Samsung Pay also works with customer loyalty cards.)