Samsung Electronics has launched its Samsung Pay mobile digital wallet in Australia, with Citibank and American Express as launch partners.The service has two significant points of difference from Apple Pay. Samsung is offering what it calls an "open engagement model", which means that it will not charge financial institutions or merchants any fees.Its aim is to create a large community of users for the contactless and cardless payment system by making it as accessible as possible.And Samsung is using a proprietary technology called magnetic secure transmission as well as near field communication technology to connect smartphones to payment terminals.The company said in a media release that the MST technology enabled Samsung Pay to support partners that used a traditional magnetic stripe. This will allow it to process payments using gift cards, loyalty cards and membership cards.In the United States, Samsung Pay supports gift cards for more than 50 merchants.Amex payment consulting group vice president, Nick Alexander, said Amex was looking for ways to integrate rewards and loyalty with payments.Amex announced a launch offer, giving users a A$15 statement credit if they use the service three times before September 14.The service is available on compatible Samsung smartphones, including Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.Samsung is using tokenisation to encrypt the user's payment details, and authorisation is by PIN or fingerprint.Citibank is only making Samsung Pay available to its credit card holders at this stage but will add debit card holders later.Samsung Pay is already available in the United States, South Korea, China and Spain, and is launching in Singapore at the same time as Australia.Samsung said that in the first six months after the launch of Samsung Pay in South Korea last August it processed US$1 billion of payments for five million registered users.