Samsung Pay is coming to Southeast Asia this year

Good news! You can now put that fingerprint sensor on your Samsung Galaxy device to, even more, use than before as the South Korean electronics giant has announced at their Samsung SEA Forum 2016 that Samsung Pay will be coming to the Southeast Asian regions this year.

We’ve come to that stage in life where we use our smartphones for almost everything. Work, play, productivity, browsing and even the occasional phone call or text, can all be carried out in the palm of your hand. It’s just so much more convenient that way.

Add that to the fact that smartphones now come with added security and encryption services, like the fingerprint, and you have another avenue for smartphone utilisation — paying for stuff at the store.

Samsung Pay is one of these wireless, moneyless, wave-to-pay services that lets you use either of the following devices:

Samsung Galaxy Note5
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
Samsung Galaxy S6
Samsung Galaxy S6 active
Samsung Galaxy A5
Samsung Galaxy A7

to store your credit or debit card information and let you pay with your phone at “virtually anywhere you can swipe or tap your card”. Support for Samsung Pay is also available on the Gear S2 smartwatch.

To illustrate, here’s a clever advertisement about Samsung Pay:

As you can tell from the video, it’s fairly simple to get started on using this service. Simply swipe up on your phone to launch the app, pick the card you want to use, secure with your fingerprint and hover your device over the card reader to pay. Hassle free.

Of course, it is likely that when this Service comes to SEA, not all banks or carriers will be supported but it is safe to assume that many of the major ones will be.

As Samsung have only just announced this at their SEA Forum, there is little information on when this will actually arrive in Malaysia (or if it will at all), though Samsung has said that Singapore and Australia will be the first countries to get this service. We will keep you updated on any developments later.