LG must have solved the problems it encounted during testing in 2016 and is preparing to launch LG Pay in June.
South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc has finally announced that its new mobile payments service LG Pay will be launched in its home country in June. The company strives to keep up with smartphone leaders Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc – both have its payment systems operating in more than 10 markets. The launch of own payment system is an excellent way to differentiate the device at a time of growing competition and slowing growth in the global smartphone market.
LG offers its payments service through G6 smartphones that went on sale in South Korea two weeks ago. The procedure of payment is similar to Samsung’s one – users will make payments through existing credit card readers via a magnetic signal from the phone.
There is no information so far about the plans of LG to expand its service to other markets. LG doesn’t unveil whether the service will be supported on other devices or generate revenue.
Initially, the launch of LG Pay was scheduled for 2016 but LG Electronics postponed the event till 2017. The company explained the decision with the problems it encountered during testing. Reportedly, it was also waiting for the regulatory approval for the service and the White Card physical cards were not so far available in the company’s home country.
Although LG failed to launch LG Pay in time, it successfully introduced LG V20, a competitor of Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The company’s newest flagship debuted with Android 7.0 Nougat and a high-tech dual-camera setup, as per AndroidPit. The V20 features a small secondary display for notifications and shortcuts atop its 5.7-inch HD IPS Quantum primary display as well as a Snapdragon 820 processor, an advanced audio system, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard memory.
Meanwhile, new details about Samsung Galaxy S8, scheduled to be launched on March 29, appear. This time, Samsung is rumored to add cutting-edge security to stand out from rivals such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Samsung could provide new Galaxy S8 with facial-recognition technology for mobile payments.
According to reports, the Galaxy S8 will use fingerprint, iris and facial detection to verify users accessing mobile services including Samsung Pay. Samsung is already working with banks to help them embrace facial recognition systems in coming months.
Samsung hasn’t commented the information so far. But if it is true, Galaxy S8 will be the first device using facial-recognition technology for financial payment applications verification. Previous Galaxy phones offered users only to unlock their phones with facial recognition.
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