Why LG Postponed Apple Pay, Samsung Pay Rival Service Ahead Of Launch With V20

Even before it could join the ranks of Apple and Samsung in providing a mobile payments service to consumers, LG has decided to bow out of its own digital wallet’s launch alongside the LG V20’s debut early this month.

Now details on why the South Korean electronics brand postponed the launch of LG Pay has surfaced, explaining what caused the unprecedented cancellation last minute. Apparently, LG decided to postpone LG Pay for 2017 due to problems that surfaced during the testing period, Phone Arena revealed Tuesday citing a South Korean publication’s report.

While Samsung Pay and Apple Pay work by allowing supported smartphones to act as though they were credit or debit cards, LG Pay is supposed to function with a universal physical card, called “White Card,” which is designed to contain all the credit and debit card information of users. The White Card works by having it connected to a smartphone via NFC for IC and mag-stripe payments.

Unfortunately, while LG was testing out its mobile payment system, certain errors were discovered. It also did not help that regulatory approval for the service has yet to be realized and the White Card physical cards have yet to be made available in the company’s home country. Hence, LG failed to fulfill the launch of its mobile payments service despite announcing in March 2015 that LG Pay is rolling out this year.

LG has yet to officially comment on the reported postponement of its mobile payments service, but Phone Arena is hopeful that the company will manage to release a competitor to Apple Pay and Samsung Pay next year.

Even though LG canceled its plans of releasing its advanced payment system this year, it did manage to deliver its Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 7 Plus competitor two weeks ago in the form of the LG V20. The company’s newest flagship debuted with Android 7.0 Nougat and a high-tech dual-camera setup, as per AndroidPit.

The V20 sports a small secondary display for notifications and shortcuts atop its 5.7-inch HD IPS Quantum primary display. It houses a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard memory. The handset, which also boasts of an advanced audio system, is scheduled to go on sale on Sept. 29 in South Korea before it hits the U.S. market a day or two after.