Samsung Pay now supports HSBC and M&S Bank cards in the UK
The company is playing catch-up with Android Pay.
In the UK at least, Samsung is awfully late to the mobile payments party. Samsung Pay launched last month well behind Apple Pay and Google's Android Pay, and almost two years after its debut in South Korea. To make matters worse, it was only available to customers who bank with MBNA, Nationwide and Santander. Today, it's playing catch-up with support for HSBC, First Direct and M&S Bank cardholders. While welcome, the app is still missing some of the big British money-lenders including Lloyds Bank and Barclays (Android Pay doesn't have the latter either, mind.)
The service is available on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the S7 and S7 Edge and the new S8 and S8+. A software update is also rolling out to this year's A3 and A7, and Samsung is promising support for additional devices "in the coming months." The big question, however, is why anyone would choose to use this over Android Pay. Samsung's version does support iris scanning for payment authorisation, which is a neat (and pretty secure) touch. But otherwise, there's little to separate it from Google's established service, which comes with handy deals and will follow you regardless of the Android phones you buy in the future.
