LG May Plan to Ditch LG Pay

It was largely inevitable that some entrants in the mobile payments market were going to have to quit the field at some point, if for no other reason than there were too many in the field already.

Some competitors were going to prove too weak to carry on and not be able to sustain sufficient market share to hold. It’s starting to look like LG’s mobile payments system, LG Pay, may be one of the latest to fall.

Current reports note that LG Pay won’t be making an appearance on the LG G6, due mainly to “time constraints,” and issues related to the “white card” format that may make it difficult for LG to completely go into play.

If citing “time constraints” sounds like a dodge, you’re not alone; South Korean news source Newsis suggested that LG may be planning to shut the whole thing down.

Indeed, the service had had its share of problems since its inception; LG Pay had already been delayed due to issues around testing the service in South Korea back in September, so it’s entirely possible that those delays may have ultimately hit too hard and forced the company out of the picture.

While this isn’t the same thing as confirmation from LG, it’s certainly a point to consider going forward. It may have been a safe bet that not everyone would stick around, but it’s hard to see why one of the device-based systems would have shut down.

It might well have had LG users on its side, if nothing else, and since the costs of having a mobile payment service on the device likely aren’t all that high, it would have been a little extra business. Why shut down altogether if there’s a chance of at least a little extra business? Profit is profit, after all, so why not pursue it?

Still, the reports may be exaggerated, and it’s entirely possible LG will stay in the fray for at least the foreseeable future. Only time will tell if that’s the case, and LG joins the other defunct systems on the ash heap of history.