14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung wanted to compete against Apple on Cupertino's own playground with an app called Samsung Pay Mini, but it turns out that its American rival didn't agree with it and decided to block it from reaching the App Store.
ET News is reporting that Samsung’s new payment app, which was supposed to be launched on iOS as well, was rejected by Apple from being published in the App Store for reasons that are not yet known.
Samsung Pay Mini is mostly an application whose purpose would be to extend Samsung Pay, a payment service developed by the South Korean firm for its own handsets, on other devices, including here iOS handsets. The first step to bring Samsung Pay on iPhones was to get this app published in the App Store, but Apple rejected it recently.
A Samsung official has already confirmed that Apple indeed blocked their app from being published in the App Store, but no specifics on the reasons behind this decision were provided.
No Samsung payment service for iOS
Interestingly, Samsung says that it won’t submit the app to Apple once again, but instead give up on iOS entirely, which means that the company’s payment system won’t become available on iOS devices. The focus will switch entirely to Android, Samsung says.
“After Apple rejected registration of Samsung Pay Mini onto its app store, we have decided to focus on Smartphones with Android OS,” a company official was quoted as saying.
As for the reasons why the app was banned from reaching the store, it’s not hard to imagine that Apple could become somewhat picky with such a payment system, especially because it could compete against its own. Apple is pushing hard for Apple Pay to become more widely adopted, and it goes without saying that a rival system developed by Samsung and available on the iPhone could have an impact on its own service.
Samsung’s decision to give up on iOS entirely can only be good news for Apple, especially if the final goal was to make Apple Pay the exclusive payment system on the iPhone.
Is this fair play? Probably not, but with Samsung remaining tight-lipped on what exactly happened with its app, Cupertino could very well say that Samsung’s solution didn’t comply with App Store guidelines.