Samsung will release its competitor to Apple Pay, Samsung Pay (good, original thinking, guys!) in South Korea in the next few days, followed by a rollout in the US in September.
On the face of it the two systems are very similar; storing multiple credit and debit cards, secured by your fingerprint, with Samsung Pay may include one technical feature which helps it trump Apple’s payment system.
Apple Pay uses Near Field Communication (NFC) to communicate with contactless terminals in stores; whilst Samsung Pay can use NFC too, it can also take advantage of another technology it secured via the acquisition of Looppay, “MST”, magnetic secure transmission (still awake?) which allows it to communicate with all card terminals, not just those that are contactless. This will make it usable in a wider range of stores than Apple Pay, or at least act as a backup communication method should the contactless terminal not work.
Here’s Samsung Pay in action: