Samsung Pay has grown and improved steadily since its inception, buoyed certainly by Samsung’s acquisition of LoopPay back in February 2015. One caveat to that success — albeit a relatively small caveat based on their user base — was that you had to have a Samsung phone in order to take advantage of Samsung Pay. With the release of the Samsung Gear S3, users were promised that Samsung Pay would work via the Gear S3 and nearly any other Android phone, though it seems that is not quite the case right now.
The official Samsung Pay Twitter account responded to a question from Android Central’s Alex Dobie, saying that their service would work via the Gear S3 and any Android smartphone running Android 4.4 or later.
@alexdobie Hi there – yes, #SamsungPay works on the #GearS3 with other Android devices running 4.4 Kitkat or above.
— Samsung Pay (@SamsungPay) November 18, 2016
We’ve received word from one of our readers that the expected compatibility is not currently available, and there is no timeline for its release via an app update. In a chat, the representative confirmed that Samsung Pay is not compatible with non-Samsung phones out of the box, but that a software update should open up compatibility to other devices at some point.
The promise of an update is nice, however for users who bought, or are planning on buying a Gear S3 for the functionality that was promised, this is not much solace. The fact that a timeline for release cannot be given really can’t fill buyers with much hope either. Samsung has already had a pretty rough year, so disappointing potential customers is not something they want to do right now.
Did you buy a Samsung Gear S3 specifically because of the promise of Samsung Pay compatibility? Were you considering a Gear S3 but might be looking elsewhere because the feature is not yet available for non-Samsung phones? Tell us what you think in the comment section below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
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