The title says it all: Without MST support, there is simply no reason to use Samsung Pay. Over the past year, Samsung Pay has effectively stripped the most compelling features, but the saving grace was MST – the technology that enabled Samsung phones to mimic a magnetic credit card strip, making it compatible with old-fashioned payment terminals. But Samsung’s latest smartphone, the Galaxy S21 series, debuted without MST this year – and all that’s left of Samsung Pay is an inflated, ad-infected app that compares poorly with Google Pay.
Older users of Samsung Pay remember that Samsung once offered a fairly substantial rewards program as part of the payment platform. Every time you make a purchase at Samsung Pay, Samsung gives you reward points that you can give for various gift cards, raffles or even the purchase products and special discounts. At the end of last year, Samsung removed the ability to earn reward points through Samsung Pay. Now, you can get these points only through Samsung purchases or referrals, which ends one of the few monetary benefits for Samsung Pay. When MST is gone, it’s one of the few disappearing little practical benefits.
Samsung Pay does have some features that are still interesting, such as Samsung Money: A SoFi bank account and debit card from Samsung. This may be useful for Samsung owners who want easy access to a bank account directly from the Pay app, but it is by no means an extremely competitive online banking offering in the wider world of such things. Samsung does offer an ’employee discount’ for everyone who uses Samsung Money to purchase Samsung products, but this is the same discount you can get as a student (5%), which Samsung in particular does not require to claim.
Samsung Pay also has a refund program, but I find it unreliable. There have been several instances where I have made a qualifying purchase, but Samsung Pay could not give me a discount. On top of that, Samsung Pay’s online payment platform is not supported at all or basically not used at all, at least here in the US. I have not yet found a website that supports Samsung Pay, and this also applies to personal-to-person payments from Samsung Pay. I have only used Samsung Pay once to send or receive money once because actually no one else uses it.
I was able to tolerate the lost features, advertising and general unreliability of Samsung Pay because I could use it anywhere more than I compensated for it. Many small businesses in my area still use outdated payment systems that do not support NFC, and I was able to use MST instead, which was very convenient. But now that I have switched to the Galaxy S21, the dream of a fully digital wallet is not only gone, the memory is polluted by the sub-par app and the experience that Samsung leaves to customers.
And what is it going to replace? It is not surprising that this is the new Google Pay, which has the same cashback features, NFC payments, person-to-person payments and soon a debit card and bank account with a Google Plex account. With Google Pay, you can even link credit cards and bank accounts to see balances and upcoming accounts. All this with a better user interface, no ads and a better payment experience (Google Pay requires no interaction to activate). In addition, web and app support for Google Pay actually exists, with direct integration into many apps and websites. You can even order food, pay for gas or park in the app itself. It’s just a more usable, widely accepted platform.
Without MST, Samsung Pay is just a more bloated, less useful and frankly outdated Google Pay. I say this as someone who was a big proponent of Samsung Pay, and therefore only used Samsung phones for a few years. I could overlook the many flaws of it, as long as MST support remained. But without it? Samsung Pay makes about as much sense to use in 2021 as Google Hangouts.