When LG launched the V10 (pictured above) not too long ago, they did so with a fingerprint sensor. Positioned in the now-familiar place that LG has been putting their power buttons for years now, the V10’s fingerprint sensor will no doubt be used for authentication when Android Pay steadily gets off its feet, but could there be more to it than that? We all know that Samsung has been working on their own competitor to Apple Pay, imaginatively named Samsung Pay, but it looks as though LG could be entering the ring with “G Pay”.
According to Korean news outlet, ETNews, LG have filed trademarks for “LG G Pay” and “G Pay” both in their domestic market of South Korea as well as in the West, which could be a strong indicator that LG is considering launching their own payment solution. Should they do so, it would be another competitor to Samsung Pay and Android Pay, two of the more likely standards to emerge successful on the Android side of things. LG and Samsung have long enjoyed a bitter rivalry when it comes to device sales and so on, but launching a competitor to Samsung Pay on a global scale doesn’t seem too likely to us. After all, LG and Google are good partners, and the South Korean manufacturer has recently been given a new Nexus device to produce in the form of the Nexus 5X, and their Android Wear watches have been flag bearers for the platform since the original G Watch launched last year.
Entering the global mobile payments market is proving difficult for both Apple and Samsung, and considering that the V10 is the first device to feature a fingerprint sensor from LG, they don’t exactly have many devices that can offer up the kind of security that customers come to expect for mobile payments. What’s more likely here, is that LG will be launching a payment system for users solely in South Korea, and leaving the West to their friends at Google and Android Pay. Of course, there’s every chance that LG believes that their “me too” payments solution could be the one that sticks, only time will tell whether or not they decide to throw it at the wall.