South Korea’s LG last year rolled out LG Pay, a mobile wallet that took an indirect approach to contactless payments by leveraging Bluetooth technology to link to a proprietary “white” card that stored a user’s payment cards. The concept never took off, and a new report suggests LG is making another run at mobile payments, using different technology.
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For its next handset set to launch during the second quarter of 2017, LG is developing its own version of a technology leveraging the magnetic strip on payment cards, in addition to Near Field Communication, according to a report in ET News, a South Korea-based technology publication.
LG’s new handsets will include NFC, but they will also enable contactless payments at terminals that aren’t accepting NFC with an approach similar to Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), a patented technology Samsung Pay uses, the report suggests. LG has found its own method and aims to avoid infringing on Samsung’s patents, according to the report.
An attendee uses his smartphone at the LG Electronics Inc. V10 smartphone launch event in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015. LG Electronics unveiled their new V10 smartphone today. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
LG Mobile in November 2015 launched LG Pay with the support of card issuers Kookmin Card and Shinhan Card, but its approach required more steps for enrollment than other mobile wallets and it was a drain on the handset battery, various observers noted.
Domestic rival Samsung Pay launched in August 2015 and has since generated more than 2 trillion transactions, the company said.
Kate Fitzgerald is an Arizona-based senior editor for American Banker and longtime payments reporter. Fitzgerald began her journalism career at the... Read full bio
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