It has been more than two months since Samsung Pay made its debut here, Samsung has done an incredible job of getting most major Malaysian banks onboard in the first round, and also some of the most used rewards card companies. I commend the company for racing to the front line ahead of Apple to bring smartphone payments here, and I was even considering to purchase a Galaxy S7 Edge, which is now rather affordable after the S8’s release, to use Samsung Pay and reduce the bulk of my wallet. However, after experiencing the Samsung Pay demo on a Galaxy A7 (2017) at a Samsung Experience store, I decided not to do it for a number of reasons.
When Samsung Pay launched, there were a number of merchants that had ‘Pay with Samsung Pay’ cardboards sticking on the payment counter, and till today I’ve never see an increase in merchants doing that. There was one day where I was queuing up to order my coffee, the person in front of me was using a Galaxy S7 Edge, while there was the Samsung Pay sign shining right in front of her, she simply whipped up a credit card from her purse and passed it to the cashier for payment, I thought either she didn’t bother to set it up on her phone or she just wasn’t interested in doing so. Also, I was rather surprised on why didn’t the cashier ask if the customer knew anything about Samsung Pay.
Back to my story at the experience store, there was this credit card terminal with a Galaxy A7 (2017) right next to it, I swiped up a dummy credit card configured on the phone, and I seriously had no idea on which part of the credit card terminal to tap on, as I assumed that it has been programmed simply to detect the presence of the phone’s NFC or MST signal, nothing happened and there wasn’t a store personnel coming over to help me complete the demonstration, I left the store feeling rather unsatisfied and I decided that things are a lot more straightforward if I pulled out my usual credit card from my wallet to pay.
The conclusion of the story here is, Samsung isn’t doing enough to promote the use of Samsung Pay, there isn’t enough campaigns educating customers the necessity of this feature, and with Malaysian banks’ implementation of using PIN to authorize transactions in the near future, I feel this is already secure enough than whipping my phone out to make payments, most importantly the inconsistency of Samsung’s promotion of its payment service doesn’t give me confidence of using my phone to substitute my plastic credit cards. With the advantage of MST (magnetic secure transmission), Samsung’s payment solution stood out when it comes to compatibility, but sadly banks and terminal providers aren’t promoting Samsung Pay, and I won’t be surprised if many Samsung users here aren’t aware of how can the service benefit them. Do you use Samsung Pay? Share with us your experience in the comments down below.
