Samsung today announced Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service that it claims will be readily available at tens of millions of retail locations around the world. The service can use either NFC or MST (magnetic secure transmission), technology it recently acquired via its purchase of LoopPay. The MST tech allows Samsung Pay to work at most credit card terminals, unlike solutions based solely on NFC, which require special terminals. According to Samsung, its mobile payment service will use something called tokenization to hide customer's credit card numbers and protect transactions. Samsung is working with MasterCard and Visa, and has the support of financial institutions such as American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank. Samsung Pay will initially launch in the U.S. during the summer months and will reach select markets in Europe and Asia later this year. It will only be available to the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.


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