Samsung Gear S3 will support Samsung Pay on any Android smartphone, even if its not from Samsung

Samsung Pay is a feature that some take for granted, but when you look at it, it’s one of the best mobile payments service on the market today. Unfortunately, it’s naturally limited to Samsung devices only. That’s even true with the company’s wearable from last year, the Gear S2. Despite packing the hardware needed for Samsung Pay, the Gear S2 could only use the service when paired with a Samsung smartphone. However, that’s not the case with the Gear S3…

According to Samsung Pay on Twitter (in response to Android Central’s Alex Dobie), the Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier will support Samsung Pay mobile payments both with and without a paired Samsung smartphone. If you pair the device with any Android smartphone with KitKat or newer, Samsung Pay will work. Obviously, this doesn’t mean your non-Samsung smartphone will work with the service, but the watch will.

Samsung isn’t clear on how this will work, but there are two likely scenarios. Samsung could release the Samsung Pay app for other Android devices to power the Gear S3, or the company could integrate that service into the Gear Manager app which handles the connection with the wearable. We also don’t know just yet if Samsung Pay on the Gear S3 will work with MST and NFC payments, or just the latter of the two.

https://twitter.com/SamsungPay/status/799467903204655104