LG's Mobile Carrier to Launch Blockchain-Based Payments Service for Overseas Travelers

LG Uplus Corp, a South Korean cellular carrier owned by LG Corporation, Korea's fourth-biggest conglomerate and parent firm of LG Electronics, is trying to launch a cross-carrier Blockchain-based payments service for all overseas travellers.

Announced on September 16, the launch will see the firm working with major partners in U.S, Japan and Taiwan to provide users of three mobile carriers faster, efficient and cheap payments when travelling overseas.

Expected to be tested early next year, the system is fully based on a Blockchain cross-carrier payment platform offered by project partner, TBCASoft, a U.S based firm, according to The Korea Times.

MoU Signed

On Thursday last week, LG Uplus penned a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with two other giant carriers; Far EasTone Telecommunications, which is Taiwan-based, and Japan-based SoftBank to combine efforts on the trial.

This service will enable LG Uplus users to carry out purchases at select retailers with the use of smartphones when they travel to Japan and Taiwan. In a similar manner, users of SoftBank and Far EasTone will be in a position to make shopping through phone-based payments when reysing in Japan and South Korea.

"Customers will have the benefit of an overseas payment system based on convenient, economical and secure blockchain technology," said Joo Young-joon, director of the mobile services at LG Uplus.

Focused on helping users bypass costly international card transactions and accelerate the payments process, the service charges for transactions via the carriers to be settled in users' countries of residence and in their country fiat currency through their mobile charges.

However, some members of the crypto community showed scepticism about the project. George Goognin, Global Ambassador at the Mile Unity Foundation aimed to educate the community about new technologies and tools for the global retail, b2b and intergovernmental (g2g) payments, and Vice-Chairman of Expert Council on digital economy and blockchain technology at the Russian State Duma, stated to Coinidol:

“TBCASoft is backed by the SoftBank, which is lead by the Korean-Japanese CEO. Masayoshi Son is very powerful person in Asia, and he has direct connection to the mobile operators, so the diplomatic side of the project seems to be backed well.

But people barely know about TBCASoft itself and the team provides zero information about the technology on their website: no development status, no open source repository, no team info. It would be very interesting to check, whether the tech part of the project is as good as political.”