LG Prepares For Mobile Payments Launch

The mobile payments space is set to gain another major player after LG appeared to confirmed it is set to launch its own service soon.

The company told The Korea Times that it will be launching such a platform in its homeland within the next few months, and is currently in talks with many of the major local credit card companies.

However there was no confirmation of a concrete launch date or expansion overseas as of yet. TechWeekEurope has contacted LG for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.

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Rumours of an LG mobile payments service first appeared last month, as the company looked for supporters for what is expected to be called ‘G Pay’. However it’s not known if the service will use NFC technology, like Apple Pay, or whether it will utilise magnetic stripe technology like rivals Android Pay.

If complete, we could well see G Pay appear in future LG smartphones such as the expected LG G5, the successor to the company’s last flagship, which was revealed back in April, or as an addition to its brand new V line, which saw its first launch, the dual-screen V10 device, last month.

LG would hope for a similar level of success as Samsung Pay, which is set to launch in the UK later this year. Following its launch last month, Samsung revealed that the service had been used for $30 million (£20m) worth of transactions – equivalent to nearly $1 million (£660,000) a day – during its first month of operation in South Korea.

After months of speculation, Google also finally launched the first phase of Android Pay last month, revealing that it would now be available to use at around one million stores in the United States.

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