LG Corporation launches a blockchain payment system

LG Uplus - a South Korean cellular operator owned by LG Corporation, the country's fourth largest conglomerate - is launching its own international blockchain payment system. The company will work with partners in Japan, Taiwan and the United States to enable users of the three mobile operators to make fast and cheap payments while traveling internationally, according to a statement on Sunday.

According to the Korea Times, the system, which will be launched in early 2019, will operate on a blockchain payment platform provided by the project's partners - the American company TBCASoft. 

LG Uplus also signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with two other operators - Taiwan's EasTone Telecommunications and Japan's SoftBank - to work together on the project.

The service will help LG Uplus users make purchases using their mobile phone when traveling to Taiwan or Japan. In the same way, Far EasTone and SoftBank users will be able to pay for services in Korea and Japan. 

“Users will be able to enjoy all the benefits of a payment system developed using reliable and secure blockchain technology,” said an LG Uplus representative.

Interestingly, this news comes less than a week after Softbank employees announced that they, along with several mobile operators, had completed testing of a mobile peer-to-peer payment application on the blockchain. Softbank also reported that the technology was developed together with TBCASoft and Synchronoss, a Japanese firm that developed a new messaging protocol called Rich Communication Service (RCS). According to company representatives, this protocol can replace SMS messages.

Far EasTone, SoftBank and TBCASoft are the creators and members of a blockchain consortium of mobile operators called the Carrier Blockchain Study Group (CBSG), whose goal is to develop blockchain services within their industry.