ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.–PSCU reported that the first two of its member credit unions have been approved for Samsung Pay.
The $5.2-billion CEFCU in Peoria, Ill. And the $2.8-billion and Virginia Credit Union Richmond have become the first of the CUSO’s owner Credit Unions to launch Samsung Pay for their members. CEFCU and VACU members with credit and debit cards in any of the credit unions’ MasterCard consumer programs are now able to load their cards into the Samsung Pay wallet for use in either NFC or mag stripe-based point-of-sale terminals, PSCU said.
A key differentiating feature of Samsung Pay comes from technology known as magnetic secure transmission (MST), which works on virtually any POS card reader making it almost universally accepted at retail outlets. The Samsung devices equipped with NFC chips and MST – Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 smartphones – enable Samsung Pay to work with both NFC and traditional mag-stripe POS technology. Since the Galaxy S6 can emulate the magnetic stripe of a card, it should work on over 90% of card payment terminals, according to Samsung, PSCU said.
CEFCU and VACU also offer Apple Pay to their members.
Both credit unions plan to promote the availability of Samsung Pay to members through their websites, social media channels and e-mail communications. While the percentage of transactions made with the available digital wallets is low in comparison to the overall volume of payments transactions, both credit unions expect adoption and traction to grow as merchant acceptance grows and consumers become more comfortable paying with non-plastic methods, PSCU said.
PSCU also announced all new Apple Pay enrollments will include the onboarding of all three digital wallets supported by the CUSO - Android, Apple and Samsung.
“We are committed to partnering with leading payments technology providers to offer our owner credit unions multiple options for digital payments,” said Chuck Fagan, PSCU president and CEO. “Our size and scale as a cooperative CUSO facilitates speed-to-market for our owners to quickly deliver the digital and mobile payments options their members are requesting.”