Samsung Pay has arrived in Australia

Shoppers with an AMEX credit card will now be able to make contactless payments with their Samsung smartphones, after American Express announced the availability of Samsung Pay in Australia.

Samsung Pay is compatible with both AMEX and Citibank credit cards, but the introduction of the payment platform is a particular achievement for American Express, which is now the only credit card issuer offering digital wallets across the two most popular smartphone brands in Australia, which account for 74% of smartphones.

To mark the occasion, American Express is giving Aussie credit card users a one-off $15 statement credit when they use Samsung Pay three times on purchases over $5. This offer is available until 14 September 2016.

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Samsung Pay will enable Samsung phone users to make mobile payments wherever Australian issued AMEX cards are accepted for contactless payments. Smartphones that support the platform include the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5.

Julie Nestor, Marketing Vice President at AMEX said, “The addition of Samsung Pay to our digital payment portfolio means that about 90% of our Card Members who already use their smartphones with us can now make mobile payments.”

Samsung Pay has been touted as a “simple and secure” payment platform and uses three levels of security: fingerprint authentication, tokenization (replacing a user's personal payment details with an encrypted digital token), and Samsung’s KNOX security platform, which monitors users accounts for malicious or unusual activity.

South Korea and the United States have already welcomed Samsung Pay, with more than 5 million people signing up to use the payment platform within its first six months of launching.

Australia is set to follow, with thousands of Australian stores adding Samsung Pay to their payment options. Aaron Faraguna, General Manager Retail Operations at David Jones said, “Many of our customers love the speed and convenience of waving their card or smartphone at the checkout and we welcome Samsung’s digital wallet to the market.”

Get on the road to making payments with Samsung Pay by choosing yourself an American Express credit card here, or compare a range of credit card options in our comparison tables.