Samsung Pay is set to invade more countries by the first quarter of 2016, including Spain, China and the UK. LG Electronics' very own mobile payment app, in the meantime, is reportedly planned to launch next month to take on Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay.
Previously, it was rumored that LG is working on its mobile payment system. It appears that the rumors are true. LG officially declared that it is getting ready to sign an agreement with South Korea's major card companies. In fact, local reports show that LG intends to ink a deal with two of the nation's biggest card companies as soon as Thursday, Nov. 19: the KB Kookmin Card and Shinhan Card.
"We will sign a deal with some of the country's major card companies before officially launching our mobile payment platform," said LG.
LG, though, has yet to push out details in regard to what the service is going to be called, when the service goes live or how it works.
Previously, nevertheless, LG reportedly registered trademarks in the U.S. and Korea, which include "LG G Pay" and "LG Pay."
In addition, LG has not yet detailed what technology it will be basing its payment platform on. Earlier reports said that LG is considering a far more flexible technology compared to what other tech giants are presently using. Apple Pay and Android Pay, for example, use NFC-based technologies while Samsung Pay employs a magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology. It is said that the MST technology supports a broader selection of payment terminals as opposed to the NFC-based technologies.
HMC Investment and Securities analyst Noh Geun-chang said that the rivalry for the mobile payment market is turning out to be so intense as firms bet on similar services.
Meanwhile, after gaining popularity in South Korea and the U.S., Samsung will reportedly launch Samsung Pay in additional regions around the globe in the near future, including the UK, Spain and China. This plan is slated to kick off in the first quarter of the coming year.
Samsung has enabled its four flagship products, the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5, with support for MST technology. This means that they can work well with older credit card terminals. This also means that there is no need for local retailers to upgrade their terminals to newer versions.
