Samsung Enhances Transit Card Functionality of Mobile Payments Platform

“The new Tap&Pay system doesn’t even require users to ‘wake up’ their smartphone screen; essentially the phone – so long as it’s running on Android P or later – becomes its own kind of contactless transit card.”

Samsung has made its mobile payments platform easier to use on public transit in two major American cities, enabling users to tap their smartphone on card readers without the need to open the Samsung Pay app on their devices.

The functionality is now available for users of the MTA’s One Metro New York fare payment systems in NYC, and to transit users in Portland, Oregon. The new Tap&Pay system doesn’t even require users to ‘wake up’ their smartphone screen; essentially the phone – so long as it’s running on Android P or later – becomes its own kind of contactless transit card.

Meanwhile, it can still be used with transit systems that support more traditional mobile payment systems as normal, with users swiping up to select their payment card and then authorizing the transaction with a fingerprint scan or PIN.

The new Tap&Pay functionality is consistent with Samsung’s longstanding efforts to make Samsung Pay the easiest and most widely compatible of the major mPayment platforms. From the beginning, Samsung differentiated its platform through its MST technology, which essentially mimicked a traditional payment card’s magnetic strip in order to fool contact-based card readers into accepting its payments.

As for its enhanced Tap&Pay system, Samsung indicated in a statement that it’s coming to more cities “soon”, though it offered no further details about any such plans.