It’s not just the United States where the Galaxy S21 doesn’t get the MST for Samsung Pay

It was revealed earlier this week that the Galaxy S21 series lacks Samsung Pay’s Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) feature in the United States. However, it looks like MST may be missing from the Galaxy S21 in more markets than we initially thought.

We can now confirm that the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 +, and Galaxy S21 Ultra also lack MST in India, which means you won’t be able to make contactless mobile payments in places that don’t have NFC machines. Samsung’s new high-end smartphones may lack MSTs for Samsung Pay in more markets. However, it’s not easy to know exactly which markets still have access to MST with the Galaxy S21 series, and which don’t, as Samsung hasn’t mentioned it in the official datasheet on all of its localized websites.

MST emulates the magnetic stripe signal of credit and debit cards on PoS (point of sale) machines, enabling mobile payments where NFC is not available. NFC payments are still not prevalent in various markets including India, which makes Samsung Pay’s MST feature a winner. However, Samsung now tends to think that the NFC has matured enough that it can now remove MST from its smartphones. The South Korean firm had already stopped equipping its smartwatches with MSTs.

Samsung US has indicated that its future phones may not have the MST feature. Samsung had acquired LoopPay in February 2015 for around $ 250 million for the MST feature. Who knew five years later, the acquisition would have been for nothing.