Ever since the Galaxy S6, one of the unique and powerful features of Samsung’s flagship smartphones has been Samsung Pay. The ability to use your phone to pay for things using both NFC and older MST technology essentially makes Samsung’s payment service accepted anywhere, and according to a new report from Gadgets360, Samsung might be working on bringing this technology to non-Samsung phones.
According to a source that is familiar with the development of Samsung Pay, Samsung is in talks with other OEMs about making Samsung Pay available on other, “high-end smartphones.” In other words, we could soon see Samsung Pay arrive on flagships from LG, Google, HTC, etc.
The NFC tap-and-pay portion of Samsung Pay would theoretically work without a hitch on other flagship smartphones, but bringing MST technology to them is another story. Samsung uses special components within its flagship handsets that allows them to mimic MST transmissions so you can pay at older terminals that don’t accept NFC, and at this point in time, Samsung is looking at two possibilities to make this possible on other OEM hardware.
On one hand, Samsung could provide other manufacturers with a specialized chipset that its Galaxy and Note line uses to make MST payments. Samsung has reportedly been in talks with other manufacturers about this, but the company has yet to comment on it.
As for the other option, Samsung is also said be toying with an accessory of some sort that would bring similar functionality to other phones. This route would reportedly be in Samsung’s best interest, and although we don’t have any idea what this accessory would look like, it’s imagined to be along the lines of what LoopPay is currently doing.
While none of these reports have been confirmed by Samsung, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t excited at the idea of Samsung Pay coming to other Android devices. Google’s done a commendable job building up Android Pay to what it is today, but even so, being able to use both NFC and MST technology to pay for things adds a lot of functionality that Google simply cannot offer right now.
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