Mobile payment services are starting to catch on in the developed world, which is an evolution over credit cards. Samsung of South Korea has just announced their alternative mobile payment service that they have called the Samsung Pay Mini. It looks like the number of rumors surrounding the Samsung Pay Mini have proven to be true after all, where the South Korean conglomerate took their time in rolling out this variant mobile payment service. Samsung Pay Mini will appear on the Android platform this coming quarter, although there has been no exact date mentioned just yet. In other words, by the time April 2017 arrives, South Korea would have had the benefit of a Samsung Pay Mini rollout.

Samsung Pay Mini smartphone compatibility
Any level of service or kind of app will certainly require a form of minimum requirements, and the same applies with Samsung Pay Mini. We are pleased to take note that Samsung Pay Mini will function well on any Android-powered smartphone or device, as long as it has HD resolution display (1280 x 720 pixels) with Android 5.0 Lollipop or newer. That would mean at least 36% of Android device owners will not be able to enjoy Samsung Pay Mini, since a whopping 22.6% of them are still running on Android 4.4 KitKat with the remainder 12% making up the Jelly Bean crowd. All the more reason to get an upgrade for your smartphone or tablet if you think that Samsung Pay Mini is going to make your life more convenient, right?

How does Samsung Pay Mini work?
It would not be too far fetched to say that Samsung Pay Mini works in pretty much the same way as that of Samsung Pay, where you can pay for all of your purchases online via the smartphone alone. In fact, it is mentioned that select Samsung Pay services can be used via Samsung Pay Mini, such as lifestyle, membership and transportation. This is certainly a nice touch which many people would probably not have seen it coming.

How is it different from Samsung Pay?
The main difference between Samsung Pay Mini and its forerunner, Samsung Pay, would be the inability to perform any kind of offline payments via Samsung Pay Mini. Samsung Pay is able to perform offline payments albeit with a compatible Samsung smartphone, and this particular feature remains off limits to Samsung Pay Mini, which is to be expected, since one might consider Samsung Pay Mini to be a lite version of Samsung Pay.

Samsung has plans to test out the Samsung Pay Mini service from February 6th onward in South Korea, making use of the Samsung Card during testing. Basically, if you have the Samsung Card in South Korea, you are eligible to test out the trial version of Samsung Pay Mini that will be put online on the Google Play Store. It remains to be seen which other countries will Samsung Pay Mini pay a visit when it is ready to rock and roll worldwide.