It happened again.
Verizon has apparently made a few changes to the firmware on its Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices, including the removal of the preinstalled Samsung Pay app.
According to a report from Droid Life, the carrier also scrapped Samsung’s Cloud in favor of its own cloud service as well as Samsung’s freshly redesigned settings menu. Verizon reportedly replaced the Samsung Pay app with Android Pay as the default mobile payment app.
Verizon’s cloud service offers users 5 GB of free storage space, compared to the 15 GB of free storage space offered through Samsung Cloud.
A Verizon spokesman on Wednesday said the changes were aimed at “simplifying the experience for customers to reduce confusion and, in the case of cloud, minimizing the chance of unintended data usage during content transfer.” The spokesman said customers are free to customize their devices using app options from the Play Store.
This isn’t the first time the carrier has removed Samsung Pay in particular from one of the manufacturer’s devices.
In March, Verizon confirmed it removed the Samsung Pay app from the Galaxy S7 – which went on to become the number three top-selling Android device in the first half of the year. At the time, Verizon said the Samsung Pay app was “undergoing routine testing” and would be available to users via the Google Play store once the device launched.
Though Verizon didn’t give a reason for the Samsung Pay removal in particular, it doesn’t take much investigation to find a likely contributing factor.
Back in 2010, Verizon joined with AT&T and T-Mobile to create their own mobile payment system, called Softcard. When Google Wallet absorbed parts of Softcard in 2015, Verizon agreed to allow Google to preinstall its payment app on Android devices sold by the carrier.
Whatever the reasoning behind the change, Samsung Pay seems to be doing pretty well without Verizon’s help.
Samsung Pay one year later
Samsung on Tuesday celebrated the mobile payment system’s first anniversary, noting it has facilitated around 100 million unique transactions in seven countries to date.
Over the past year, Samsung said the payment system has expanded to include membership cards, gift cards and coupons in addition to credit and debit cards. There are more than 4 million registered membership cards on Samsung Pay in the United States and South Korea alone, the company said.
This story has been updated with a comment from Verizon.