Samsung Pay adds Wells Fargo support for US cardholders

Samsung’s mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, has 5 million registered and processed $500 million in transactions since its launch in August 2015. Considering Samsung Pay is available on every flagship Galaxy device in both the US and South Korea, that’s not a particularly impressive stat. However, the company says it’s continuing to partner with new banks, including Wells Fargo starting today, to increase its number of card issuers.

More than 70 banks and credit unions in the US now support Samsung Pay, the company says, and it’s laid out plans to expand the service to Brazil, Australia, China, Singapore, Spain, and the UK. At the moment, however, it lags far behind Apple Pay, which is supported by more than 90 percent of the US market, as well as banks in the United Kingdom and China and American Express in Canada and Australia.

Samsung has an edge against competitors though by using magnetic secure transmission technology, which it obtained by acquiring the startup LoopPay last year. That lets Samsung Pay work on older point-of-sale terminals by transmitting information via magnets. Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay require newer, near-field-communication terminals to do contact-less payments in stores.