Samsung Pay is on a roll. After launching in South Korea and the US in 2015, it has expanded to China in 2016, started a trial in Singapore last week, and now it's deploying in its first European market: Spain.

And Samsung Pay is starting with a big advantage in Spain: it's the first mobile payment service to be offered in the country [Edit: Samsung said it's "the first of its kind," which apparently doesn't mean it's the absolute first. As readers pointed out, several mobile contactless payment solutions already exist in Spain], giving it a huge lead and potential for growth, especially considering the penetration of debit and credit cards among the country's working age population. Starting today, customers of CaixaBank and imaginBank can add their credit and debit cards into the Samsung Pay app on their phones and start using them to pay at different terminals. Abanca and Banco Sabadell will be joining them "soon." As for compatible devices, they're the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, S7, S7 Edge, and the Galaxy A5 2016 will be added in a few weeks.

Samsung says it's working with plenty of Spain's top retail and service businesses to provide better support for Pay and bring value-added services, so Spaniards can expect to be able to use Samsung Pay at "Cepsa, Cervecería La Sureña, Domino’s Pizza, El Corte Inglés, Fridays, Ginos, Grupo DIA, MediaMarkt, Mercadona, Phone House, Repsol, Rodilla, Saba, Starbucks, The Good Burger, The Wok, VIPS, VIPSmart, 100 Montaditos, with more to follow in due course."

This leaves Samsung with 4 more countries to go to fulfill its promise of expanding Pay to 7 countries in 2016: Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the UK. There's no word yet on when these will join the ranks, but it's starting to look like the company is on the right track.

Source: Samsung Newsroom