Samsung Pay could replace debit cards for withdrawing cash from ATMs as feature goes live in Korea

Did you ever think you could withdraw cash without your debit card? Samsung is making us believe it is very much possible through its mobile payment platform Samsung Pay.

Residents of South Korea who own a Samsung Galaxy handset can now use the company's digital payment platform Samsung Pay to withdraw cash from an ATM, with no debit card needed. The Korean giant, which always rolls out its services and devices in its home country, made the announcement at the Samsung Developer Conference 2016, taking us a step closer to cardless cash withdrawals.

As of now, the feature is only active to Woori Bank customers in South Korea. Along with the facility to withdraw cash, Samsung also added support for gift cards and membership cards, letting users redeem points for rewards and benefits all through Samsung Pay itself.

The company has not yet announced the feature for other markets but surely will look to set-up deals with banks across the globe to try and take this proposal forward. Remember that Samsung Pay itself is on a developmental path with the service being recently available in the US and China and upcoming launches are scheduled for Australia, Brazil, Canada Singapore, Spain and the UK in 2016.

So it may take time but Samsung very much has the capability to rollout such a feature to a larger consumer base given it gets the support from the desired banks. What works in Samsung's favour in particular is the fact that unlike Android Pay or Apple Pay it uses Magnetic Secure Transmission technology to replicate a physical credit card or in this case it can do so for a debit card. As a result, it is already compatible with most current credit readers.

The mobile payment platform has already recorded transactions over $500m (£347) during its first six months of existence from around 5 million users in the US and South Korea alone. As the China launch was recent, no number has have been unveiled till now as to how the platform is doing there.

In addition to this, Samsung announced at CES 2016 that the Gear S2 will be updated sometime this year to support phone-less mobile payments. Although far-fetched at some point, this means the digital payment system could rollout to wearables, thus enabling cash withdrawals