BARCELONA, Spain – Samsung Electronics today unveiled its fifth-generation Galaxy S flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, which will support NFC, as expected, and also feature a fingerprint sensor in the home button that can secure mobile payments. PayPal has announced it will be the first payments company to support the fingerprint authentication feature on the device.
The feature, which also can unlock the phone, is similar to Touch ID in Apple’s iPhone 5s, which replaces passwords to make payments with iTunes accounts. On the Galaxy S5, PayPal said users could pay with their PayPal accounts at any merchant that accepts PayPal on mobile and in-store. The in-store payments are still conducted on the Internet over the mobile network and are not believed linked to PayPal’s other in-store payment technology tryouts.
The Galaxy S5, which will be available in April, also supports card-present payments at the physical point of sale through its support for NFC card emulation, in addition to the two other NFC communication modes, tag reading and peer-to-peer.