Samsung Pay goes live in South Korea on August 20, US to follow

Samsung Pay, the company's mobile payment service, which is meant to compete with cash and plastic, and not rivaling solutions, is on the verge of its public launch. It will first be available in South Korea starting a week from now on August 20. Next in line is the US market, where Samsung Pay will launch on September 28, with beta testing to be carried out in the meantime.

Samsung Pay relies on a combination of NFC and MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) technologies. While the first one requires updated terminals, MST is designed to work with existing ones thus making it compatible with every terminal, where you can swipe your bank card, or so Samsung claims. The security of the transaction is guaranteed by fingerprint recognition, Samsung Knox and storage encryption.

So far, the devices that support it are the Galaxy S6/S6 edge, and the just-announced Galaxy Note5 and Galaxy S6 edge+. We witnessed it in action and by the looks of it, it works effortlessly, but you can see it for yourself in our hands-on report.