Affinity Federal Credit Union Rounds Out mPayment Support

A major New Jersey credit union is rounding out its mPayment support. Having introduced Apple Pay support last February, Affinity Federal Credit Union is now offering support for Samsung Pay and Android Pay.

In a statement announcing the new support, Affinity CEO John Fenton explained that it “enables Affinity to stay at both the forefront of protecting our members’ personal information, as well as at the head of the technological curve,” adding that both new mPayment platforms “are also fast, easy and convenient to use”.

Affinity’s statement also highlighted Samsung Pay’s use of magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology, which allows the platform to emulate a traditional swipe card to enable contactless payments on POS terminals that do not yet support the NFC technology required by Apple Pay. It is perhaps the key advantage that has allowed Samsung Pay to overshadow Android Pay and stay competitive against Apple Pay, which launched about a year ahead of Samsung Pay.

Turning to the matter of security, Affinity focused on Samsung Pay and Android Pay’s use of tokenization. No mention was made of the biometric fingerprint scanning systems used by Samsung Pay and Apple Pay—a polite stance toward Android Pay which doesn’t require biometric authentication, but one that belies the significant advantages offered by its mPayment rivals.