Mobile payments are going to be a big thing if they are not already. Apple Pay just became available in Apple’s biggest market, China, this week. That must have sent some alarm bells ringing across the entire industry as reports emerging from that region suggest that several device makers who are also Apple’s competitors in the market may be working on their own mobile payments solutions.
Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi, some of the big mobile device makers in the country and who command a sizeable share of the smartphone market, are said to be mulling releasing their own mobile payments services.
So far, mobile payments services in China are the preserve of non-hardware makers (like Tencent’s WeChat Wallet and Alibaba’s AliPay Wallet) even though Apple’s recent decision to introduce its own payments service in the company will definitely change things. Apple is one of the top smartphone vendors in China. Another global smartphone heavyweight, Samsung, has a sizeable influence in the Chinese market and is expected to unveil its mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, sometime this year. Google services are not available in China so Google’s Android Pay is not a threat to the reported ambitious plans by Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE.
Via: GizmoChina
