LG to launch NFC mobile payment system in 2012

LG Electronics will be bringing out an NFC payment system in Europe in 2012 which will let clients swipe their phones to pay for goods.

“The point-of-sale research, which will be targeted at small and medium-sized businesses and will involve NFC or nearly field communications and cloud computing, is currently in beta testing,” Jin-Yong Kim, vice president for business solutions at LG’s Home Entertainment division, told Reuters.

How it happens

Regardless of how it happens, the LG NFC payment system is just the latest sign that mobile payment is close to hitting the mainstream. I know our readers in Japan, Korea and other places already have been using their phones to pay for stuff nevertheless this is a major improvement for consumers in places like the United States.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and others have teamed up to create the ISIS initiative and this is aiming to bring NFC payments to a large audience. The three carriers have more than 230 million clients combined, so it could in the end have tens of millions of clients armed with ways to pay with their phones.

Big push with this research

Google is as well making a big push with this research, as Android however supports NFC and the search giant is reportedly building a mobile payment platform. Let’s hope all the technologies will be interoperable because the easiest way to kill adoption is to make it fragmented and difficult to use.