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We all love bonking to pay, but if you bonk with a Windows Phone then Microsoft has bad news
Look, the platform is dead. Will you just move on already?
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honour the memory of yet another Windows mobile technology. The rabidly unpopular Microsoft Wallet for the much beloved Windows Phone is for the chop.
Microsoft has quietly updated its Microsoft Pay page to reflect the demise of the tap-happy mobile technology, though it broke developments to the masses in an odd way.
"Breeze through checkout by using your Windows phone. Just tap, pay, and you're on your way. Starting on Feb. 28, 2019, the Microsoft Wallet app will be officially retired."
Oh dear.
It's a sad end to the company's dabble in near-field communication (NFC) payments, an adventure that began back in June 2016 with the launch of the Wallet App for US Windows Insiders. The app was only ever supported on Lumia 650, 950 and 950 XL, a pointer to the impending demise of the platform.
It was also very late to the bonk-to-pay game, jumping in way after both Apple and Google had both already implemented the technology.
Even though support for Windows Phone runs, in theory, until December 2019, the Wallet App is due to be buried under the rubble of the Seattle viaduct on 28 February 2019 as Microsoft continues its efforts to forget the whole Windows Phone thing ever happened.
Microsoft Pay itself is not going anywhere at present and the company is still keen to promote it as a way of speeding up online check-outs. Worryingly for the Pay team, aside from Windows Phone, the gang at Redmond make much of the product's integration with another doomed technology: the Edge browser.
No flowers. ®