How Samsung Pay, Apple Pay Stack Up on Mobile Payments Front

Two arch-rivals are now battling in the mobile payments space. We look at factors that will determine how Samsung Pay might fare against Apple Pay.

Samsung has an early advantage in the mobile wallet market by supporting more locations than any other provider. The reason is that Samsung Pay works with older machines that Apple Pay and Android Pay do not support. Although that advantage will wane over time as merchants upgrade their machines, it’s an interesting move on Samsung’s part that could help it get out of the gate early.

Apple Pay’s device support is a little stronger than that of Samsung Pay. The service, which has been available for about a year longer than Samsung Pay, works on iPhone 6 and up, as well as the as-yet launched iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 and the last two iPad Minis. Even the company’s smartwatch Apple Watch supports Apple Pay.

Samsung Pay doesn’t have deep support for devices. In fact, the service is available on the Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy Notes, and the Galaxy S6 Edge and S6. While that still includes millions of devices and future Samsung smartphones will add support for Samsung Pay, it’s important to know which devices are supported before picking up a new handset.

One of Apple’s major advantages is that it has strong support from some of the largest retailers in the world. In fact, some of the biggest retailers, including companies like Walgreens and Dunkin’ Donuts, all support the service. Better yet, Apple says that more companies are joining the parade as time goes on. Retailer support matters—and Apple has it.

Samsung Pay comes with solid security all around. To access the service, users can swipe up from the home button to open Samsung Pay. From there, they can make a payment without pulling out their plastic by placing their finger on the built-in fingerprint scanner. According to Samsung, the actual credit card information is never passed to the merchant, keeping that important information safe from potential hacking at the retail level.

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are extremely similar when it comes to how they work to secure user privacy. When users are making a purchase with Apple Pay, they can place their finger over the Touch ID on their iPhone and make a secure payment. All the while, none of the credit card information is sent to the merchant. Touch ID is also used with in-app purchases to limit the chances of false purchases being made on a user’s account.

Although more credit card companies will need to be added in the coming months, Samsung has done a fine job of getting credit card support to this point. As of this writing, Samsung Pay works with cards from American Express, Bank of America, Citi, USBank, MasterCard and Visa. That should just about cover at least one card in the user’s wallet.

A slew of credit card and debit card companies offer Apple Pay support, including both large and small institutions, such as local banks, ranging from Bank of America to Salem Five Bank. Apple Pay even includes support for reward cards at major retailers. Apple Pay has exceedingly strong support, and it’s getting better by the day.

Interestingly, Samsung has decided to focus its service on in-store purchases, which means users won’t be able to use Samsung Pay for online or in-app buys. It’s possible—and indeed likely—that in-app purchase support will be added in the future, but for now, Samsung Pay is in-store only.

One of the major differences between Apple Pay and Samsung Pay is that the former comes with full in-app support. So, customers who want to make purchases from an application can do so from their supported Apple products. Over time, Samsung will likely catch up, but for now, that could be a major factor in how people end up using the different solutions.