Samsung Pay Review (2024)

In several ways, Samsung Pay has been more innovative than the payment app competition from Apple and Google. It was the first to offer a rewards program, and remains the only app that lets you pay at non-NFC magnetic credit card terminals—thought that's far less of an issue these days. The newest addition to the app is Samsung Money by SoFi, a no-fee, interest-bearing cash management account. Samsung Pay also offers NFC payments, loyalty plans, and Visa Checkout online. It's a decent option if you own a recent Samsung smartphone, but it lacks person-to-person paying, a web interface, and cross-platform support.

Setting Up Samsung Pay

The app and service work on most recent Samsung phone models, dating back to the Galaxy S6. In fact, it's preinstalled on many Samsung phones. I set it up on a Galaxy Note 8, which involved creating a Samsung account and PIN. Adding a credit or debit card starts with simply framing the card in the camera rectangle that appears when you choose to add a card and then entering the expiration date, CVV number, and ZIP code. Next, you agree to the usual verbose terms of service. I also had to call my bank to authorize the setup, but that varies depending on how your bank's security is set up; some simply require a text message or email verification.

The first payment card you add automatically becomes a Favorite Card, but if you have multiple cards entered, you need to choose a Favorite Card. One other thing to note is that after setting up Samsung Pay, you can't use Google Pay for NFC payments without changing phone settings to switch the default tap-to-pay app.

Samsung Pay's design is a bit more cluttered than that of most payment apps I've tested, with lots of tabs and sections for deals and buttons across the bottom, but that's not much of an issue when you go to pay at a store or restaurant.

Paying With Samsung Pay

To test Samsung Pay, I headed over to my favorite local premium coffee shop, which uses a Square point of sale device attached to an iPad for payments. The device only accepts magnetic stripe credit cards and cash, so no other mobile payment option works there. After holding my phone up to the card reader for 15 seconds, nothing happened, until I tapped the Pay with Samsung Pay PIN button at the bottom of the screen. I had previously set up the app to use my irises for payments, but that didn't kick in. A second try, after setting up Pay to use my fingerprint, also didn't take effect until I entered my PIN. Once I had entered my PIN, the payments went through immediately.

I also set up Samsung Pay on a Samsung watch, which offers a potentially more convenient way to pay. The watch has its own LTE connectivity, so you don't need to have your phone nearby and paired. And in fact, you don't need any connectivity at all to use Samsung pay—just as you don't need connectivity on a magnetic stripe credit card, though Samsung limits you to five transactions, the count being reset each time you make a wireless connection. You do need to set up a PIN on the watch, and for some reason, I had to enter my credit card info again, even though I'd already done so on my Galaxy test phone.

Using my watch to pay was, in fact, a much more frictionless experience than using the phone. You simply long-press the top button, your card image appears, and you accept the payment. My cashier at the local Chinese restaurant was impressed, this being her first time seeing someone pay with a smartwatch.

One inconvenience with Samsung Pay on the watch is that if you take the watch off your wrist, you must enter your PIN to start using it again. This makes sense as a security protection: You wouldn't want someone to be able to take the watch off your wrist and start paying without that protection. Another security measure (also used by Apple Pay and others) is the use of tokenized codes rather than your actual credit card number. The service is protected by Samsung Knox, which monitors the devices for suspicious behavior.

Samsung Money by SoFi

Previously Samsung Pay relied entirely on linked debit cards for the actual monetary transactions. With Samsung Money by SoFi, you can now use Samsung Pay as your bank, and the service even pays interest. The service has no fee, and Samsung teamed up with MasterCard and SoFi to provide it. Another perk of the service is that you get employee pricing on Samsung products—30 percent off, which adds up if you're buying a Galaxy Z Fold 2, a 98-inch QLED 8K TV (which lists for a cool $60K), or even a major home appliance.

To get started with Samsung Money by SoFi, you first must agree to the privacy terms, which are not especially comforting: You agree to share any and all information collected from your use of the service with Samsung, its parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates, including application info, transaction data, and other personal information. The SoFi privacy policy also states that they share your information with "nonaffiliates" (that is, third-party companies) to market to you. It says you can limit this sharing, but it's not clear how. In fact, there are nine documents you must agree to, though an Agree to All button lets you fast-track the process.

If you decide to throw caution to the wind and sign up for Samsung Money, you must enter your name and DOB, address, citizenship, and SSN. You're informed that your SSN is protected and encrypted and that signing up doesn't affect your credit score. Then it needs your phone number for a text verification. After your account is set up, you're sent a card in the mail that you can use at ATMs, which you can find using the app. You can still use the account to pay in all the ways discussed above, approving actions with biometrics such as your thumbprint. You also earn percent interest on money parked in the account; if you maintain a Balance of $500, you receive a rate of 0.2 percent APY, below that gets you a measly 0.01 percent. The average for interest-bearing checking accounts is 0.06 percent, according to valuepenguin.com.

Whenever you use Samsung Pay, you get 5 Samsung Rewards points. For 2,000 points, you can get a $5 reward card, so it's an understatement to say that you need to use the service a lot to get anything worthwhile from it. Still, I haven't seen this perk in other payment apps, and if your linked card earns you points, you're pretty much double-dipping with Samsung Pay. I still think it would make more sense to award points as a percentage of the transaction's dollar amount rather than a flat five points per transaction.

The app includes a Store section where you can buy gift cards for shops and restaurants, and a Deals section offering coupons you can print out. You can also add gift cards and membership cards in the app's Wallet section. Memberships you can add include things like airline frequent flier programs, store loyalty cards, and even regular gym memberships. Finally, for payments on websites and in apps, Samsung Pay can be used with Visa Checkout for over 350,000 merchants.

Samsung Pay works not only in the US, but also in 17 other countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. That's better than Venmo, which works only in the US, but it can't match PayPal's more than 200 supported countries.

What You Don't Get With Samsung Pay

Unlike most of the other payment services I've tested (aside from Google Pay), Samsung Pay doesn't let you send money to friends and contacts. You can do that with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Square Cash, or Venmo.

Samsung Pay is only about purchases made with mobile devices. The service doesn't have any presence on the web at all. By comparison, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, and Square Cash, all let you pay from a web browser. With Samsung Pay, you can't even see your account online, let alone make any payments to people or other websites without your phone in hand.

The Best Way to Pay?

Apple Pay and Google Pay only work with point of sale devices equipped with NFC technology, while Samsung Pay works at magnetic card readers as well. That said, paying with it isn't as smooth as with Apple Pay or Google Pay, and magnetic stripe card readers are no longer the norm. You can't pay friends with Samsung Pay as you can with most payment apps, but you can enroll in lots of merchant loyalty programs, add gift cards, and earn Samsung reward points. The new Samsung Money account may interest those who like interest checking, but it doesn't offer better rates than online banks. As with Apple Pay, you're limited to one hardware company. For a service that does more and works on all platforms, look to our Editors' Choice, Google Pay.