Samsung has quietly killed Samsung Pay’s best payment method, Galaxy S21 series won’t support MST in the US

As far as Samsung’s US customers are concerned, one of Samsung’s “best technologies” - the MST - is also not going to be available on Samsung Galaxy S21 series.

Not just the newly launched Galaxy S21 series, MST support will not be available on any future Galaxy device. (Samsung)

Samsung just announced the new Galaxy S21 series last evening and the absence of support for expandable storage on the new smartphones, no microSD support, took a lot of people by surprise. And that's not all, as far as Samsung's US customers are concerned, one of Samsung's “best technologies” - the MST - is also not going to be available on Samsung Galaxy S21 series. 

MST, or Magnetic Secure Transmission, is a contactless payment solution that emulates the “magstripe terminals still used by many credit card readers in the US”. This is one of the features that made Samsung Pay one of the best mobile payment services in the US, as XDA Developers reports.

While MST support is listed on the spec sheet of the Galaxy S21 on some pages, Samsung has confirmed that the technology is missing from the Galaxy S21 series devices that are going to be sold in the US. Also, MST support will not be available on any future Galaxy device.

The news of MST being removed from Samsung devices was first broken by ArsTechnica's Ron Amadeo on Twitter.

By the way, the Galaxy S21 doesn't have MST. It's not on the spec sheet and Samsung just confirmed in an email.

Samsung Pay will focus on NFC.

— Ron Amadeo (@RonAmadeo) January 14, 2021

Then Samsung said in a statement that:

“Due to the rapid adoption of near field communication (NFC) technology by consumers and businesses, beginning with devices launched in 2021, Samsung Pay will focus its support on NFC transactions, across the Galaxy portfolio. While future devices will no longer include magnetic stripe technology (MST), customers with previous, compatible Galaxy devices will be able to continue using Samsung Pay, including MST.”

Samsung Pay is one of the top payment platforms in the US and many businesses in the country are yet to upgrade their payment terminals to support the NFC standard and many of the ones that have might not accept payments from all mobile payment services. Some businesses intentionally limit which services can be used, while others just haven't upgraded their equipment.

If you don't live in the US, the absence of MST won't really matter to you though.