Samsung Pay to Expand Beyond US and South Korea, Starting With China




Samsung's mobile-payment service will expand beyond the US and South Korea this year.



The South Korean company said Friday that Samsung Pay is coming to China in March - a month after rival Apple Pay. It will hit Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain and the UK later in the year. Samsung also plans to expand to Canada, though no timeframe was given.

Samsung Pay works with certain Samsung phones. As with Apple Pay on iPhones and Google's Android Pay on a broader range of Android phones, users add their credit or debit cards and make payments at stores by tapping on a machine with a wireless technology called NFC.

Many merchants don't have NFC, though. Samsung Pay can work at additional stores by mimicking the magnetic swipes produced by plastic cards.

Apple on Thursday launched its smartphone-based payment system in China where the electronic payments market is already dominated by an arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba.

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