Samsung Electronics is launching its mobile payment app in Brazil on 19 July, just in time for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Brazil becomes the first country in South America to get Samsung Pay and joins the list of markets where the service is currently available.

Samsung Pay is already available in South Korea, the US, China, Spain, Singapore, Australia and Puerto Rico.

The service can be used at virtually all places where credit or debit cards are accepted. It enables users to pay with their compatible Samsung smartphones at point of sale terminals, with the help of Magnetic Secure Transmission and NFC technologies.

Brazil has become a priority market for Samsung because of the increased number of mobile banking transactions which happened between 2014 and 2015.

According to a research conducted by FEBRABAN (the Federation of Brazilian Banks), in 2014, about 4.7 billion mobile banking transactions took place and in 2015, the number grew to about 11 billion – a 138% rise.

Samsung Pay vice president and global co-general manager Thomas Ko said:  “Samsung Pay reinforces the company’s focus to bring value to both consumers and partners by bringing innovative services to your smartphones.

“We are always exploring creative technologies and use cases to provide consumers with an immersive and holistic mobile wallet experience.”

Samsung has partnered with major payment networks such as MasterCard and Visa to bring mobile payments to customers. Initially the service will be launched by major issuers such as Banco do Brasil, Brasil Pré-Pagos, Caixa, Porto Seguro, and Santander.

The company is working with other bank partners such as Banrisul, Bradesco, Nubank and Itaú-Unibanco to further expand its service.

Samsung claims that its service is simple, secured and can be used almost everywhere. For making payments, the customer just needs to take his phone, scan their fingerprint and make the payment.

The transactions are secured according to Samsung with three layers of security such as fingerprint authentication, tokenisation and Samsung KNOX.

The South Korean electronics giant is also confident that its payment service will be compatible and available with majority of existing and new payment terminals.

The compatible devices for Samsung Pay will include Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy A5 (2016), Galaxy A7 (2016), Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge.