Tag: amex

This mobile wallet has now made its way Down Under and aims to replace cash and train tickets.

In the competitive world of mobile payments, the Samsung Pay app has now launched in a new market. Australians have another mobile wallet choice in this area where there are many rivals but where adoption is scarce.

Mobile wallet apps have not been taking off at the rate expected by many of the companies behind them.

The Samsung Pay app was launched as a result of a partnership with both Citibank and American Express. The goal is to be the first contactless mobile payments platform to truly take off in the country.

Australians who use Samsung smartphones can pay at contactless terminals through those mobile devices. They simply need to download the mobile wallet and connect it with an American Express or Citibank card. That said, they cannot use Citibank and Amex branded cards from other banks with this mobile application.

The Samsung Pay app lets consumers complete payment transactions through tap and pay terminals.

This has made Australia the fifth market to be able to use Samsung Pay. Before Australia, the countries using this mobile app have been: Korea, the United States, China and Spain. That said, Singapore followed closely on its heels, having launched only days later.

Samsung Pay will function on any Galaxy smartphone, provided it has at least Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher. Its interface is designed to be simple and straightforward with a swipe to pay format. Samsung claims this makes it just as easy to pay with a smartphone as it is with a card. In fact, the company said it might be even easier for some.

The Korean consumer electronics company also identified four secure steps that are taken to complete every Samsung Pay app transaction:

• Open payments by swiping up from the home screen
• Select the desired card
• Place your finger on the home button so you can verify your fingerprint
• Tap the smartphone against a contactless terminal

The mobile payments system uses tokenization to make certain that card details remain private. They are never shared with the merchant.

This adds one more option to the limited number of cards that are currently available to use.

The joint venture Isis mobile wallet that was created through AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon has not been entirely popular among consumers, even after its nationwide launch in November, but the payments option is now working to overcome one of its primary barriers to adoption.

The system is now supporting American Express Serve to help to boost its cards.

One of the primary problems that consumers have had with the Isis mobile wallet is that it supported only two cards. Those are the Chase and American Express cards. This means that if a consumer wishes to try the service he or she must have one of those two cards. It won’t support regular debit cards, nor the two credit card giants, Visa and MasterCard, at the moment. This new addition could help to change that.

The latest change to the Isis mobile wallet could mean that more cards will be compatible, if indirectly.

With the support that the payments service will now have for American Express Serve, it will mean that there could be a roundabout way for consumers to be able to choose their favorite cards to pay for their purchases. The reason is that Serve acts as a kind of digital prepaid card that can be prepaid. This means that it can be loaded with funds from credit cards, debit cards, or a bank account. Once the funds have been added, it can be used in any location that already accepts American Express credit cards.

As Serve has already been doing a great deal better than the Isis mobile wallet, overall, particularly among business clients, it looks as though this could give the program a considerable shot in the arm in terms of its appeal to consumers and its compatibility with the types of cards that they already carry. It has also been considered to be quite helpful in terms of expense management, as it functions in the same way as cash instead of credit. It makes it easier for the user to be able to stick to a budget and pay attention to how much he or she is spending.