Samsung has confirmed to Android Police that starting with the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra Samsung devices will no longer come with Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). This is a feature that allows Samsung Pay to be used on traditional ‘swipe’ point of sale machines that do not have near field communication (NFC) for contactless payment. Future models will also not come with MST with Samsung citing the widespread adoption of NFC as the reason.
Samsung acquired LoopPay in 2015 which powered this feature. Samsung went all in on Samsung Pay when it first launched with features like this and a somewhat lucrative rewards program, recently Samsung announced that Pay purchases would no longer earn rewards points. Interestingly the LoopPay founder released details of a new all in one card ‘OV Valet’ that they have been working on as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/oacfwp/galaxy_z_flip_3_filing_confirms_verizon_5g/
https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-z-flip3-5g/specs/
Not sure if this is accurate, but both of them list that the z flip 3 has MST technology in Samsung Pay.
Apparently the S21 line with the Exynos chipset outside the USA will have MST, just not the Snapdragon variety being pushed out in the USA and Hong Kong.
Tried paying with Samsung Pay at Walmart, didn’t work. Cashier said ONLY WALMART PAY.
Tried paying at QFC (Kroger Brand), printed out sign on machine said “NO CONTACTLESS APPLE OR SAMSUNG PAYMENTS”
I was under the impression that this was secure form of payment, and now we’re literally having to go back to carry credit cards. As the world moves forward, the USA is taking steps to thwart technological advances, it seems. Unless it’s NSA.
Especially incomprehensible since contactless payments are safer during this pandemic.
Does S20 have MST? I am thinking of getting a S20 instead of S21.
YES. only s21 and newer wont.
Add me to the list of those mourning the death of MST, but I can guarantee Samsung considers the MST user base small enough to, at this point, not give the tiniest crap about what we think. I used to have upwards of 70 or more MST transactions per month. Now I;’m lucky to have 7. I’m heavily focused on using the Chase Freedom Flex, which can’t even be used in Samsung Pay. Now that Discover It has grocery stores as part of the Q1 5% cashback categories, I may throw some business their way, before the end of March. The death of MST is just the latest and final kick in the Samsung Pay nuts, at least for the ways in which I’ve been using it for years. I don’t live in the sticks, but NFC is still not that prevalent, and that’s a problem as much as shopping at WM is necessitated by my modest bank account.. With WM doing their best across the U.S. to shove WM Pay down all our throats (aided by the fact they’ve all but killed being able to use Samsung Pay in store), that ended the largest percentage of my SP usage.
I’ll probably get the Capitol One WM Rewards card, use it with Walmart Pay for the first year to get 5% back in-store, then burn the card in effigy on the front stoop of the local WM.
Found out the hard way, at WM checkout, with only my phone and driver’s license. Had to leave product, go home, and grab a credit card. This is just wrong, but, it is what it is. I just buy more and more online, and less and less from Walmart. Not that this impacts Walmart any haha.
This is so stupid MST was the only reason I was even considering a Samsung because it was their exclusive tech.
Guessing this is about the expense of adding anything to a standard chipset. The fewer changes you make to the normal system-on-chip that a dozen phones are using, the fewer things you have slowing down your updates and incurring expense as long as the phone is supported.
Also, I’m betting 99% of people never used it. NFC’s pretty universal in Korea, Japan, Europe, and China, where >90% of mobile payments happen, so this would really only be useful in the US and maybe India.
I wonder if the Chinese government had a finger on the scale, too. They’re pushing hard to get people on WeChat payments, which are NFC.
China’s mobile wallet has never been NFC based. Both AliPay and WeChat are QR-Code based since day one. There was an attempt by UnionPay, the Chinese version of Visa/Master, to promote NFC but failed miserably, then it switched to QR-code as well.
In India, most POS machines which support International cards are NFC enabled. They call it “wifi” here 😛
No wonder. They took away charger in S21 as well as microSD card. Tell me one reason to buy you “samsung”??/
To hate myself everyday with oneUI 2.74.4?
I bought my Samsung phone precisely because it had MST. But that was when Samsung Pay kept offering incentives to use it. I haven’t seen an incentive in a long time, so I haven’t used it in a long time. But I did think the tech was kind of nifty
This worked so well with US Bank Altitude Reserve 🙁
I heard LG is adding similar technology to their phones though. Guess I will be switching to LG now!
LG Pay has a similar functionality on 3 devices, yes, but all are older than the Galaxy S20.
They got rid of it as well?