LG is releasing a mobile payment app, and you'll never guess the name

The mobile payment world just got a little more crowded, according to the Korea Herald. LG is deploying the entirely obviously named LG Pay in South Korea with the help of four credit card companies and big plans for expansion. LG Pay is expected to compete directly with the more well known Samsung Pay by offering a different approach to emulating regular cards in magnetic stripe terminals.

Instead of using the Samsung-owned Magnetic Secure Transmission tech, LG will be using Wireless Magnetic Communication for its feature. Users likely won't notice a significant difference in how these two magnetic communication methods work, as both invite you to tap the back of your phone to the magnetic stripe reader on the terminal to wirelessly transmit credit card data. As we know, this has significant advantages for adoption beyond what NFC can offer because it works with "old" payment terminals.

LG isn't currently talking about plans for expansion, but assuming this South Korean rollout goes as planned you can likely expect to see this feature offered later this year.

Russell Holly

Russell is a Contributing Editor at Android Central. He's a former server admin who has been using Android since the HTC G1, and quite literally wrote the book on Android tablets. You can usually find him chasing the next tech trend, much to the pain of his wallet. Find him on Facebook and Twitter