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.
For the unfamiliar (which could be a lot of people — no one used it) LG actually had its own contactless payments platform, launched in a half-hearted attempt at very late competition with Samsung Pay. Like Samsung, LG Pay supported magnetic-based payments on supported hardware, which was a little unique. LG Pay debuted in the US with the G8 ThinQ, though it never reached the sort of widespread use that Samsung (or even Google) enjoyed. And while it could have easily and obscurely trucked on for another few years, the shutdown of LG’s mobile division almost certainly hastened its death.
There are several phases to LG Pay’s shutdown. On June 1st, you will no longer be able to purchase or add gift cards to your LG Pay account. On August 1st, LG Pay will stop accepting new sign-ups entirely, and existing customers will lose the ability to register new cards, though existing cards won’t be affected. But on November 1st, the service will be discontinued entirely.
LG encourages those with a Perks Card remaining balance to use those funds up before November and to back up any gift cards or loyalty cards they may have by accessing them in the app and either writing those details down or screenshotting them. You can also unenroll early if you want to. More details are available in the company’s FAQ here.
Customers with LG phones hoping to continue using contactless payments will need to find an alternative. While Samsung limits Play Store compatibility for Samsung Pay to its own devices, LG device owners can try out the new Google Pay. Last year it got a sweeping redesign here in the US following an earlier rollout in India, and it has a few snazzy features, like bank integration for Plaid, and Gmail-integrated receipt tracking.
