Samsung Pay Eliminates Big Hurdle by Snagging Verizon as Partner

It was going to be hard for Samsung Pay to tout itself as a mainstream option for mobile payments without the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier on board. It no longer has that problem.

The South Korean device maker announced on Wednesday that Samsung Pay is now available on phones running on Verizon’s wireless network, rounding out a list of partners that already included the other three big U.S. carriers. A Samsung Pay executive said this summer at a press briefing that the holdup with Verizon was over “economics,” but declined to comment further.

With the addition, Samsung Pay now has a legitimate offering that it believes is more complete than those from competitors. That’s because its tap-to-pay mobile wallet works with many older types of checkout equipment in stores in addition to newer equipment that includes NFC technology. Similar offerings like Android Pay and Apple Pay, on the other hand, only work with the newer equipment that includes NFC. Samsung’s acquisition of payments startup LoopPay for about $250 million gave it the technology that makes Samsung Pay compatible with legacy store equipment.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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