Samsung Pay starts Southeast Asia rollout with Singapore

SINGAPORE -- Samsung Pay is coming to Singapore next week, where it will tussle with arch rival Apple for the top spot in the smartphone-saturated market.

This makes Singapore the first Southeast Asian country and the fifth globally to get the payment service, allowing you to link a credit card to your phone and tap to pay at retail outlets.

Samsung Pay is available in the company's home of South Korea, and launched in March in China. It's also in the U.S. and Spain -- and very likely coming to Australia next week, too.

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Starting June 16, Samsung Pay will be available here on American Express cards, and for customers at Citibank, DBS and POSB, OCBC and Standard Chartered.

Samsung will hit a broad user base from the get go.

This rollout is later than Apple Pay's in Singapore, but by roping in nearly every major bank across MasterCard and Visa cards here, Samsung will hit a broad user base from the get go.

In comparison, Apple Pay launched only on American Express in April, which covers an estimated 5% of card holders here. It added more of the major banks later in May, but still doesn't include banks like Citibank.

Samsung Pay also has another technology trick up its sleeve to cover traditional payment terminals, if the retailer hasn't upgraded to modern near-field communication (NFC) readers. Using magnetic secure transmission (MST), the phone essentially mimics the signal of a magnetic strip on a credit card, therefore allowing the cards to be accepted at older swipe card terminals.

Similar to the process of paying on iPhones, Samsung Galaxy phone users can tap their phones on the payment terminal while unlocking the process with their fingerprint on the device.

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