LG’s mobile payment service, LG Pay, which is currently only available in South Korea on the LG G6, is due to expand next year to be included on all new LG budget priced devices in 2018.
The LG Pay service is still yet to be expanded beyond the borders of South Korea, but the expansion of the service to lower end devices will also bring global availability and online shopping malls says Cho Jun-ho, president of LG’s mobile communication division.
LG Pay was launched alongside the LG G6 back in June this year, with the aim of LG Pay to claw back market share from rival Samsung whose Samsung Pay service has dominated the local Korean market, as well as being available globally.
Given that LG Pay is only available through the G6 currently whilst Samsung Pay is available through approximately 12 devices in South Korea (and more internationally), LG Pay certainly has a lot of catching up to do to even compete with Samsung Pay. According to the Korean Herald Post and Korean research firm Wiseapp, during the month of June, the number of LG Pay users stood at 95,000, compared to Samsung Pay’s 5.2 million users.
Cho did not elaborate the specific date for a global launch beyond ‘next year’ saying that LG isn’t able to provide a fixed date for when the expansion of LG Pay will occur as the company needs to address technical issues with financial companies.
Kim Jong-dae, a researcher at LG Economic Research Institute, told The Korea Herald that “The users will naturally increase when the service is available in more areas. However, the expansion should also be based on consumer demand and patterns considering the costs required to develop, operate and maintain every new system.”
It will be interesting to see how LG Pay can expand market share in the increasingly busy mobile payments area just by expanding availability to budget devices. Given services like Android Pay is available on any Android device running Android 4.4 with NFC built-in, LG Pay has a lot of work to do to gain traction, so it will come down to financial institution support, something that Samsung has been slow to expand.
We will be reaching out to LG Australia for comment on this move and the expansion of LG Pay here.
