And it’s official. After delays and even more delays, LG will be finally launching its own mobile payment service in South Korea in coming June. The eponymous payment service, named ‘LG Pay’ will work similar to its biggest competitor, Samsung Pay. According to an earlier announcement made by LG, the LG Pay would be made available on its latest handset, the G6.
How it works
Although greater details are yet to be announced by LG, we do know this much at this point. You will need to initialize the app by taking a picture of your credit card/debit card using your phone’s camera and then pair it with your fingerprint. Whenever you pay using LG Pay, you just need to place the handset against the NFC reader or the credit card reader, to make secure payments through fingerprint authorization. The core technology of LG Pay is its magnetic waves transfer, the same tech used by Samsung Pay.
Rumours
Samsung launched Samsung Pay in August 2015 and has been pretty successful with it. Two months later, a South Korean news agency reported that LG Pay would be, simply, a plastic card that looks like any other credit/debit card but, will be able to incorporate all your cards into a single one. The card will supposedly use an app to make payments, or at least that was the idea according to the news agency which even posted this unverified photo:
The claims were highly plausible because LG announced in November 2015 that they’re partnering with South Korean credit card companies, Shinhan Card and KB Kookmin Card for launching LG Pay.
In January 2016, rumours of LG Pay sporting an LCD display made the rounds, followed by which LG made an official announcement that they’re putting LG pay on the back burner until the launch of G5. However, the latest announcement states that LG Pay would indeed be rolled out with their latest devices and will not, after all, be just another plastic card. But whether LG plans to throw us any surprises is yet to be seen.
Surprises?
It’s highly speculative why LG has been pigeonholing LG Pay for quite a long time. Whether they’re planning to come up with some surprises is something that will take until June to find out.
LG, for the moment, seems to be well aware of the competition from Samsung Pay and Apple Pay which explains the launch in only their home market. It hasn’t made any announcements as to which all devices or markets will see LG Pay either.