Samsung announced on Thursday its homegrown mobile-payments platform, Samsung Pay, will officially launch in Korea on Aug. 20. A U.S. launch will follow on Sept. 28.
The service will also launch in the UK, Spain and -- notably -- China as well, although Samsung didn't give launch dates for those countries.
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Samsung also announced Samsung Pay will be compatible with store-branded credit cards, loyalty cards and gift cards. It's unclear how many the service will support at launch, but company reps the service can "easily" support them.
Samsung Pay will be pre-loaded on the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 smartphones, which launch on Aug. 21, and existing Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners will get the service via a software update coming in mid August, Samsung says.
First unveiled in March alongside the flagship Galaxy S6, Samsung Pay is the Korean giant's formal competitor to Apple Pay. However, Samsung's service differentiates from Apple's solution and other NFC-based systems by being compatible with older magnetic-stripe readers.
"Most existing solutions rely only on NFC, which is fine technology, but most stores don't have it," Samsung's Injong Rhee said at the event. If consumers always have to second-guess whether a store has [NFC], it creates a mental block. Samsung Pay is accepted virtually anywhere."
Like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay uses tokenization to create a device- and retailer-specific number for transactions that is separate from an account holder's credit card number. It also incorporates the device's fingerprint sensor to authenticate the transaction.
BONUS: Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+
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