Samsung brings contactless payments to smartwatches

Samsung today announced that Australian Gear S2 and Gear S3 owners can now use their smartwatches to make contactless payments through Samsung Pay.

Samsung Pay is Samsung's take on a mobile-driven contactless payment solution, and was previously compatible with the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, and Note 5. At present, American Express and Citibank are the only two card issuers that support Samsung Pay.

Samsung Pay makes use of payWave-style NFC technology, but also works with Magnetic Strip Transmission to ensure compatibility with legacy card readers that don't support contactless payments. The Gear S3 supports Samsung Pay over both NFC and Magnetic Strip Transmission, but the Gear S2 will only do NFC.

In order to make a payment on a Gear S3 or Gear S2, you'll authenticate with a four-digit pin, then tap your watch on the terminal to finalise the transaction.

"For the first time, Australians will be able to use Samsung Pay to tap their Gear wristwatch and purchase their Christmas gifts, pay for their coffee while on the run, or pay for their taxi ride," said Samsung Australia's Head of IT and Mobile Richard Fink. "We have already seen an incredible uptake of Gear wearables in Australia, as well as Samsung Pay for Galaxy smartphones, which makes this an exciting and compelling solution for customers."

Only Gear devices bought in Australia will support Samsung Pay in Australia.

Possible to use Samsung Pay on a Gear wearable without it being connected to your smartphone, but the watches do need to touch base regularly to keep transaction history in sync. This frequency of which smartwatch needs to connect to your smartphone (which itself has to have an active internet connection) will vary from bank to bank.

Notably, the Gear S2 and Gear S3 do not need to be paired with a Samsung smartphone to use Samsung Pay. If you own a non-Samsung Android device, you'll find Samsung Pay in the Gear Manager app.

The news follows the Australian launch of the Gear S3, which went on sale on Friday last week.

Alex Choros

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Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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