Samsung Pay will support online purchases from early 2017

Samsung Pay users around the world will soon be able to use the service to buy items online. The company announced today that it has signed a deal with Mastercard to use Masterpass, a digital payment system already supported by hundreds of thousands of online retailers in 33 countries, starting early next year. In addition to buying goods online, users in the US will also be able to use Samsung Pay for in-app purchases, and find money-off discounts for local stores from November, as Samsung makes its payment service more of a fully featured online wallet.

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Online payments are currently possible in Korea

Online payments were already possible through Samsung Pay, but only in the company's native South Korea, where they counted for 25 percent of the 2 trillion won in payments processed by the service. In expanding the new feature to other countries from early 2017, Samsung Pay users be able to make online payments from their phones, tablets, or computers, and use express checkouts that automatically fill in payment data based on information saved in Samsung Pay wallets.

In-app payments and discounts will arrive sooner than online payments — in the US at least — in November this year. Wine app Hello Vino and restaurant booking service Velocity are among the first apps to enable Samsung Pay in-app purchases, letting users buy wine or book tables through the service. It's not clear exactly what kind of discounts US customers will be getting through the service's new "deals" feature, but as the company rolls its digital wallet out to even more countries, they could help make Samsung Pay a more attractive payment option in a crowded market it shares with Apple and Google's digital wallets.