Samsung Pay lands in Google Play Store for select Verizon phones
Better late than never: Samsung Pay is available today as a free download for Verizon Wireless customers. Official support starts at 12pm ET, although it could be available sooner.
While its peers quickly adopted Samsung's unique dual solution for mobile payments back in September, Verizon kept subscribers in a holding pattern as it was "evaluating" Samsung Pay.
That's a shame because Samsung Pay is more widely accepted than both Android Pay and Apple Pay.
Samsung can boast that because its digital wallet app doesn't just work with NFC chips and special point-of-sale terminals.
The company bought LoopPay and its technology earlier this year, which creates magnetic fields similar to the magnetic stripe on a traditional debit or credit card. As a result, Samsung Pay doesn't require that merchants swap out or upgrade their payment terminals: Standard card-swipe machines can still be used with Samsung Pay.
For now, Verizon customers have to have a supported handset to use Samsung Pay, and that's a relatively short list: the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy Note5, and Galaxy S6 edge+ work with the app so older phones need not apply just yet.