NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – It was the fall of 2015, and interest in the Pays wallets was burgeoning. Google and Samsung had each launched their respective payments services in September of 2015 in the U.S., following introduction of Apple Pay a year earlier.
Weeks later, LG Electronics, then still a top five mobile phone maker globally–though just barely–confirmed rumors that it, too, planned to launch a Pays service, called LG Pay. More than three and a half years later, on Tuesday, it finally launched LG Pay in the U.S.–with only one handset and six issuers so far. The U.S. is only LG’s second market for the service after launching in its home base of South Korea in June of 2017.
But with steadily falling smartphone sales and plummeting profits, it begs the question of why LG decided to launch LG Pay in the U.S. at all following the significant delays in the service. While LG ranks as the No. 3 smartphone supplier in U.S., that share has been falling, as well. In the first quarter of 2018, LG had 14% of the U.S. market, which has dropped to 11% in Q1 2019, according to Counterpoint research. The research firm places LG as a distant third among smartphone suppliers in the U.S. behind Apple and Samsung.
