Samsung Pay to reportedly launch in Canada first week of November

Samsung Pay may launch in Canada in the coming days, according to a customer support screenshot shared with Android Central.

Twitter user Saifali Maknojiya reportedly posed a question to a Samsung customer service representative through its built-in app and received a response that Samsung Pay, the company's competitor to Android Pay and Apple Pay, would launch in Canada in the first week of November.

According to the representative, the service will first launch with CIBC Visa cards, which would not be surprising considering the bank's willingness to experiment with new mobile payment partners. CIBC was the first Canadian bank to launch NFC-based mobile payments back in 2011 in partnership with Rogers. It's unclear when the service will expand to other banks and payment providers like MasterCard and AMEX.

Samsung confirmed earlier this year that Samsung Pay would come to Canada in 2016, so this timeframe does match up with those claims. We've reached out to Samsung Canada to confirm the authenticity of this screenshot.

More: What Samsung Pay means for Canadians

Unlike Android Pay, Samsung Pay combines NFC-based mobile payments with a Samsung-owned technology called MST that mimics the traditional magnetic stripe on the back of all credit cards. Because Canada's payments ecosystem has long moved beyond magnetic stripes, opting for the more-secure EMV-based combination of chip-and-pin, Samsung has seen Canada as a less important market for Samsung Pay than less advanced markets like the U.S. The service launched in Russia, Thailand and Malaysia this week, and already works in the U.S., UK, Australia, Singapore, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Spain, China and its home country of South Korea.

Samsung Pay currently works with Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 active, Galaxy S6, and Gear S2.