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LG Pay is shutting down later this year
Things will progressively break until November 1st, which marks the end
Following LG Mobile's shutdown on July 31st, owners of the company's smartphones have another calendar date to make a note of. Come November 1st, LG's widely unused contactless payments system is also shutting down, according to emails currently being sent to customers. Between now and then, features and sign-ups will be progressively disabled.
More than a year after it was reported that LG would be launching a mobile payment service with compatibility for magnetic stripe terminals in the United States, the company has finally announced the arrival of LG Pay for the LG G8 ThinQ. Though we can say that Samsung Pay finally has a one-to-one competitor in its space, it will take a good while before spreading out to other devices.
LG first launched its mobile payments platform in June 2017, but only in South Korea. Since then, the company accidentally published a broken payments app with muddled branding in early 2018, and later confirmed LG Pay would arrive in the US at some point that year. But the most recent step toward mobile payments from the company is something a bit different: LG Pay Quick. LG has recently applied to trademark the name in Europe, the US, and South Korea.
According to an article yesterday published by Yonhap News Agency, LG is reportedly releasing its LG Pay service in the US by June. The report also claims that LG's upcoming G7 and V40 handsets will accompany the launch. For the unfamiliar, LG Pay service will enable users to make payments with supported LG devices on normal credit card readers, similar to the MST used by Samsung.
Last year, LG made it clear that it intended to enter the mobile payments space, and in June it jumped in, releasing the service on its recent G6. At the time, it was called LG Pay. But just today, LG released—perhaps accidentally—a confusing new LG Wallet app to the Play store, and the app listing mentions the G7.
Samsung launched a payment platform a few years back, and we should have known then it was only a matter of time before LG did the same. Indeed, LG announced several months ago that it was getting its own phone-based payment system. The predictably named LG Pay has launched, but only in South Korea for now.