From cashless to cardless in a jiffy, Samsung launches Samsung Pay in India

While the country is still working towards a cashless society, Samsung has launched its cashless plus cardless solution where Samsung users in India will be able to make payments through credit cards, mobile wallet and unified payments interface (UPI) by a single wave of their phone using the Samsung Pay app.

The mobile payment service by the Korean electronics giant Samsung will allow users to pay for goods and services simply by waving your Samsung smartphone near a cash register instead of swiping a credit card or fishing for the payment information.

Samsung Pay app supports credit and debit cards of Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. For State Bank of India, only the credit cards are supported. Apart from Visa, MasterCard, and American Expresses, Samsung has partnered with Axis Bank to facilitate payments using UPI and is working on integrating Citibank card holders too. Samsung Pay will also support payments through mobile wallets and Paytm is already on board.

It is certainly a new wave of payment in India and it still has a long way to go as currently Samsung Pay works only with select Samsung handsets selling upwards of Rs20,000 mainly the company’s line of Galaxy smartphones—Samsung Galaxy Note 5, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, Samsung Galaxy A7 and Samsung Galaxy A5. And interestingly Samsung Pay also works with the company's smartwatch Gear S3.

Apart from the inaccessibility you still have to hold on to your mobile wallets like Paytm as Samsung Pay doesn’t allow online payments yet and can only be used for payments at retail outlets.

Samsung Pay was initially launched in August 2015 in South Korea and it is now available in 12 countries including the US, China, Spain, Australia and Sweden.

Most importantly in terms of how secure the app is, Samsung claims that there is no storage of information, all the data is encrypted. Payments can only be authorized by scanning your fingerprint or entering your Samsung Pay PIN. All transactions use a random token instead of the card number, which means the actual card information isn’t shared while paying. Samsung also promises that even if you lose your phone, your card information stays safe as it is safely encrypted within a separate data vault.

Well, the timing is perfect as India as a whole is moving towards a cashless society and services like Samsung Pay can really come 'handy'.