LG has demoed its LG Pay payment service at the World IT Show 2017 exhibition in COEX, Seoul ahead of commercial launch in June. It uses Wireless Magnetic Communication (WMC) technology, a magnetic technology that can be used as an ordinary credit card when making offline payments. A magnetic signal is generated from a mobile device and is paid to a credit card terminal.
It’s rival Samsung Pay uses Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology that replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported device to a standard card reader. Here is a quick video demo of LG Pay from ZDNet Korea.
LG said that LG Pay has high security that includes fingerprint authentication and adds a new virtual card number every time you make a payment to prevent the card number from being leaked, thus enhancing the security.
LG recently filed a domestic trademark application for LG Pay. It has partnered with eight domestic credit card companies including Shinhan, KB, BC, Lotte, Hyundai, Han, NH, and Samsung for the LG Pay service. With the launch next month, Shinhan, KB, BC, Lotte credit cards will support LG Pay and it will expand to other banks by September.
LG Pay is supported by the latest LG G6 smartphone, which will be added through a software upgrade. In addition to offline payment, LG plans to expand LG Pay support for online payment and banking services soon.