So this is a nifty extra on the soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy S5. If you have a Commonwealth Bank or Westpac account, you can use the phone’s built-in NFC for fast Tap ‘N Pay payments.
Campbell over at Gizmodo reports that the option requires you to install an app from the relevant bank, then you’re good to go. Infinitely preferable to the fiddly case-adding variants we’ve seen in the past.
If you’re contemplating the S5, check out our Planhacker guide to all the contracts available.
Samsung’s Galaxy S5 Will Let You Tap ‘N Pay With Westpac, Commbank [Gizmodo]
Comments
8 responses to “Galaxy S5 Offers Tap ‘N Pay For Commonwealth Bank And Westpac Customers”
Um, you can already do this on the Galaxy S4. With the Commonwealth Bank app at least, don’t use Westpac myself so I cant confirm if it works on the S4.
I’ve found that it didn’t work at all paypass locations though. Worked at Woolies and 7-11, didn’t work at JB HiFi. Haven’t tried in the last few weeks. Worth mentioning that it is, in my eyes, a bit more secure than carrying a card, as the NFC powers down when the screen goes to sleep, so nobody can brush past you and collect all your details/charge you.
The Galaxy S4 works correct, BUT NOT Telstra Galaxy S4’s. CBA and Telstra are aware of the issue and are trying to resolve it but it’s taking forever.
Absolute shame that the US has been making payments like this for years and we’re only just catching up…
Google Wallet when?
LOL! No they’re not/aren’t.
America is SO far behind the rest of the world in payments. They’re all still swipe and signature (chip isn’t mandatory until 2015/2016, and they’re not even doing PIN).
They do have a bunch of competing “pay by phone” solution, but they all have massively varied support and far from wide-spread acceptance (mostly all in various levels of pilot stages limited to one or two cities).
Do yourself a favour and research Google Wallet. It’s only fully functional in the US, and uses a phone’s NFC to work pretty much the same as PayPass/Wave.
It has the added benefit of not requiring a fee like Commonwealth’s App.
Right. Except that paypass/paywave support in the states is really low. It’s not like Australia where the majority of terminals have it built in. Over there the majority of terminals are swipe only (no insert, definitely not tap to pay).
You’re also limited to carriers that Google have signed up with (or at least were until KitKat where they put in an emulated secure element).
Seriously??? What about adding all devices with NFC chips to the ‘allow’ list? What’s the point of excluding N4, N5, HTC’s etc ???
I agree with @stickman that this should be allowed with any NFC capable device, but I don’t have all the details on the specifics as to why that might be the case.
What I do want to ask, is can anyone tell me why you can do this on the Galaxy S4, but not the Note 3? Aren’t the internals pretty similar?
Just tried it with the Samsung stock version of the S5. It doesn’t work. It comes up with the same error message that telstra galaxy s4 users experience.
Neither banks are supporting this yet… commbank says its working on it, and westpac hasn’t added the feature to its menu