Why doesn’t Samsung Pay work on Samsung Galaxy S9,S8,S7,S3

First let’s check

1. The bank card you are trying to download does not fit (see here about banks working with the service.
2. You haven’t created a Samsung account yet. In this case, just go through the quick registration procedure.
3. Your cell phone just doesn’t support contactless payments. Since the operation of a smartphone in contactless card mode requires the installation of various additional modules in it, Samsung decided to take the path of least resistance and simply not install these modules in its lower price segment products. In this case, it is physically impossible to make Samsung Pay work on your device, because it simply does not have the necessary components for this.
4. This is common, especially in Russia – your phone may turn out to be “gray”, that is, the official region for its sale is not Russia.

Main reasons why Samsung Pay doesn’t work

Samsung Pay is a system that allows you to make payments using just your smartphone. You can link any number of cards to a specialized application and not carry them with you, using only your smartphone. However, often owners of smartphones that support this system encounter problems that prevent them from using this feature. The main reasons can be:

• mismatch of the firmware version for the e-wallet to the country where you are located. The system will not function properly if you are in a country where this function is not supported (a complete list can be viewed on the official website of the smartphone manufacturer). You can check the compliance in the settings, in the “Model number” section, the information is contained in the “Serial number” and “IMEI information” lines. The last two indicators must match, otherwise the payment system will not work;
• Incorrect date and time setting. This data must be synchronized with the time zone you are in, otherwise the system cannot function.
• malfunction of the NFS-chip, ingress of moisture or dirt into it;
• problems on the part of the bank or terminal. Often problems arise not with the system in the phone, but with the operation itself, the card or the payment terminal.

Smartphone blacklisted

Unfortunately, many sellers in our country sell just such phones, mainly in order to reduce their price. Smartphone manufacturers consider this practice wrong, and are constantly developing new methods to combat it.

For Samsung, one of these methods was blocking Samsung Pay on phones in some regions. If the device is on the list of officially supported ones, but Samsung Pay does not work on it, this is a clear sign that your gadget is “gray”.

However, there is a third reason: you or someone else could “reflash” the device. Many companies (including Samsung) do not mind users making modifications to the software of their devices.

However, the Korean company, fearing that “flashed” devices could be used for fraudulent purposes, has built in a special mechanism that blocks the use of a smart device as a means of payment after its first “flashing”.

If for some reason you could not get Samsung Pay to work on your smartphone, then there is no need to despair, because many Russian banks offer special bank cards that allow you to make contactless payments without using your phone.

How to fix the problem

The first thing to do is to check the balance on the card, and whether it has expired. If everything is fine on the bank side, check if your NFS-sensor is dirty, if water has got on it. If a visual inspection showed that everything is in order, try rebooting the phone – this universal method solves 80% of phone problems.

1. Go to your smartphone settings.
2. Find “Application Manager” in them and select the appropriate program.
3. In the window that opens, find the line “Data reset”.
4. Click on the “Reset” button and wait for the process to complete.
5. Then press the “storage” button, then “clear data” and restart your smartphone.

If all this did not help, try paying with another card, as well as delete and re-add the one you need. If you failed here too, don’t tempt fate – take your smartphone to repairmen, don’t risk ruining an already fragile innovative system yourself.

It happens that the application responsible for making payments freezes or starts to fail. In this case, it will help:

1. Hard reset of the smartphone, how to do it, watch the video.
2. Reinstall the entire application. Delete the program using system tools and download it again from the Play Market
3. Install updates. See how to do this below or in the video at the end of the article.

Physical damage

It may well be that Samsung Pay refuses to work due to damage to internal mechanisms, in particular the NFC chip. The chip may simply be defective or poorly secured after a previous repair.

In this case, there are two ways out

1. Service Center
2. Try to repair it yourself (but without smartphone repair experience, it’s better not to meddle)

First, check the device itself for external damage, and only after you find visible traces of physical impact, proceed to repair.

Updates needed

First, let’s analyze the reason why the problem with launching the application may occur in the first place. This reason is an old software version. If the necessary updates are not installed on your smartphone, the Samsung Pay application will refuse to start.

There are two options for solving this problem:

• the smartphone itself will prompt you to install the latest software version on it
• you need to update the firmware on your own initiative.

There are two ways to update the phone’s firmware: using a special program on a computer and without a computer, using Android itself.

But no matter what method you choose, you need to remember that you cannot return to the previous version of the software after the firmware, and also that you should save the information you need before the upcoming actions.