Fuelling the march towards the Samsung Galaxy S7 phone launch, the Korean company dangled a Samsung Pay UK release date carrot at its European Forum 2016.

Nathalie Oestmann, Head of Samsung Pay Europe, announced on stage that the mobile payment tech will be "coming to the UK and Spain very soon this year". The exact date? "More details [will follow] at MWC [Mobile World Congress] in a few weeks time".

With Apple Pay having launched in the UK in July 2015, it's about time Samsung whipped its payment service into order to keep on top of the competition. As it will work at almost any payment card terminal, it's a potentially convenient system that can draw from your saved credit and debit cards to make payments.

Right now Samsung Pay only works on the latest Galaxy devices - Galaxy S6, S6 Edge+, S6 Edge, S6 Active, and Note 5 - with the S7 and S7 Edge no doubt getting added to that list. For US customers only certain carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, and Verizon) operate with the app-based tech, which will no doubt expand to additional carriers to cover wider territories.

We already know that February 21 will be the grand unveiling of the Galaxy Galaxy S7, so all signs point to that date being when Samsung Pay finally gets its UK debut, expanding upon its current US and Korean markets. Until then, we'll just have to keep waiting.