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Samsung Pay is a hit in its home country

Samsung Pay has barely been available for a month in its home country of South Korea, but that isn't stopping Samsung from crowing about its early success. The tech giant says that it has already seen the equivalent of $30 million in transactions in that first month, spread across 1.5 million purchases. That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's "beyond" what the company was hoping for. These aren't just one-and-done tests, either. About 36 percent of users were active in the past month, while 10 percent were enthusiastic enough to use Samsung Pay every day. And in case you're curious, the Galaxy Note 5 was the weapon of choice -- 60 percent of Korean purchases went through the supersized phone.

Whether or not that translates to the US and other countries is another story. While Samsung is practically a fixture of daily life in South Korea (it even has its own credit card company), it doesn't have nearly as much clout elsewhere. Also, it's difficult to gauge Samsung Pay's overall performance without context. There isn't much official data available for Apple Pay's launch, and it's doubtful that even that information would be comparable. It may take months, if not years, before it's clear whether or not Samsung Pay has legs.