New Final words: Mobile payments in 2016

It's important to know that paying with your phone is in fact secure with all three services.

All three payment solutions are secure

If you are paying at an NFC-enabled terminal, it's important to know that the actual card number does not get transferred and have a peace of mind that malicious hackers won't be able to steal it. The transaction uses tokenization, which means that instead of real numbers, what's transmitted over the air are encrypted tokens. The other important security aspect is the Secure Element (SE). This is a separate and special chip inside the phone. It's special not just because it is dedicated to mobile payments: even its physical design is such that it is protected from hardware attacks. Each time a user starts a transaction, the SE assists in generating a random, one-time use code rather actual card numbers.
Then, there are MST transactions with Samsung Pay. You should know that security for those transactions is different than with NFC. In order for MST transactions to work, a magnetic coil inside your Galaxy phone runs alternating currents through an inductive loop and generates a dynamic magnetic field that a terminal can read. This exact magnetic field contains your payment information. How is this secure? First, this current appears for a very short period of time and secondly, it only spreads within 3-inch distance. These two factors make it hard to intercept this information, but for all else, this is just as secure as using a credit / debit card.