Should you marry, [email protected]!#, or kill Samsung Pay?

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a silly social game called "marry, [email protected]!# or kill" where friends reveal which celebrity they’d love to marry (if opportunity knocked and they asked,) which celebrity they’d kill (cuz getting away with murder makes more sense than just avoiding their crap movie,) and most importantly, which celebrity you’d [email protected]!# (if pigs flew and the moon were made of cheese.)  Yes, sarcasm, because you ain’t prolly never gonna meet your ideal celebrity, let alone boink or marry ‘em (while kill somehow still seems wholly plausible.) 

Let's play!

Okay, so now that you get the premise, let’s apply it to Samsung Pay. Why? Cuz it’s more fun than writing a straight up article about another boring payment system sucking your wallet dry. So in this instance, should you marry Samsung Pay (use it regularly, even if it gets on your nerves,) kill it, (which is just your overly dramatic way of saying uninstall,) or [email protected]!# it, (make it your bitch for one transaction then toss it to the curb?)

What's Samsung Pay?

Samsung Pay is similar to Apple Pay, which is similar to Google Wallet. Basically, you can pay for stuff with a fingerprint or an NFC bump. So why choose one over the other? Because some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate, and some smarmy jerks spoon out all the strawberry straight from the box. Samsung Pay works with all major cellular carriers in the U.S., including, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and yes, even US Cellular, metroPCS and Cricket, cuz you guys have suffered enough.

Pick a card, any card

Samsung Pay works with Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards issued by the majors, like Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, US Bank and Wells Fargo. To see a complete list of participating banks click the magic link. Just open the Samsung Pay app, take a picture of your favorite credit card, or go it old school and type in all those pesky digits manually. You can add up to 10 credit cards, and the app will confirm each one via a text or email sent to you from your bank, and voila, next time you want to pay for something you'll be good to go.

How does it work?

Samsung Pay currently works with all versions of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S7, as well as the Galaxy Note5.  To make the magic happen, you'll have to grant the app permission to use your fingerprint, which will in turn will charge your credit card of choice. Once the app is set up, you'll see a small bar at the bottom of your lock screen. All  you gotta do is...

1. swipe the small bar upward
2. scan your fingerprint via your phone's home button
3. swipe to select which credit card you want to use
4. hold your phone near the merchant's payment terminal
5. cha-ching, you've just paid for your stuff

For comprehensive details about the nitty gritty, including a nifty payment simulator, click here.

Where can I use such sorcery?

Pretty much any merchant that has a card swipe, NFC, or chip-based payment terminal can accept Samsung Pay, without the merchant needing to do anything special or change their equipment.

What's Next: Paying for stuff with your thumbprint

Once upon a time, there was an old school TV show called Max Headroom, and people in this mythic future paid for stuff with credit tubes; small, metallic gizmos that stored all your financial information. Sounds goofy, and yet it's not far off the mark. Samsung Pay, Apple Pay and Google Wallet have just connected the dots between fingerprints and your financials, and we're all buying it, hook, line and sinker. So it's really not a stretch to think that one day, thumbprints will be universally accepted for all sorts of things. Yup, its all very Big Brother, and will be spoon fed to us in increments so we barely notice the seismic shift.

Freeze your cell phone in a glass of water

In the old days, people who couldn't control their credit card spending were told to freeze their credit card in a glass of water, that way, they'd have to think twice before thawing that sucker out to make a purchase. But with money flying through our gizmos with the greatest of ease, what's a shopaholic to do? Pray.

What's (not) in your wallet?

No more personal photos, no more cash, no more credit cards. Now that you've freed up all those slots in your wallet, what will you use them for? Are wallets officially obsolete? Regale us in the comments below with what is, and isn't, in your wallet, if you even have one. Photo credits: Featured image: (c) Ian Morris Neopolitan ice cream, (c) FatGuyFoodBlog.com Max headroom, (c) Wikipedia