Robinhood has postponed the planned U.K. launch of its widely used mobile investing app in order to focus on its core U.S. business, which has gone through a trading surge mixed in with some major operational issues in recent months.

"A lot has changed in the world over the past few months, and we've made the difficult decision to postpone our UK launch indefinitely," a Robinhood spokesperson told Mobile Payments Today, via email. "As a company, we are refocusing our efforts on strengthening our core business in the US."

The company said it realized there were many in the UK looking forward to the launch and regrets it could not deliver the product in 2020.

The announcement comes amid controversy for the company after a 20-year-old user, Alex Kearns, committed suicide amid fears that he had lost more than $700,000 in options trading.

While sources familiar with the company said the U.K. move was not related, Robinhood officials last week said they were making changes at the company to make sure they properly educate customers and also are considering steps to raise the criteria required for such sophisticated activity.

Early on during the pandemic, the app encountered major technical issues after the stock market went into sharp fluctuations when the COVID-19 outbreak hit the U.S.