This makes the company the latest smartphone maker to step into that Chinese market.
Xiaomi Mi Pay has launched in China. This has added yet another mobile payments option for consumers in the country. It also means that Xiaomi has become the latest in a series of smartphone makers offering a mobile wallet in China.
The Mi Pay mobile payments service is a contactless payments system using NFC technology.
So far, Xiaomi Mi Pay supports debit cards from 12 banks and credit cards from 20 banks. These include China Merchants Bank, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Bank of China, among others. According to Xiaomi, a smartphone user will be able to add up to eight cards to their mobile wallet.
Lei Jun, CEO and founder of the company, said “We believe that Mi Pay will be a key driving force in promoting the development of China’s mobile payments industry, and deliver much more convenience to our users.”
Xiaomi Mi Pay jointly launched with the China UnionPay state-run nationwide mobile payments system.
There are already a number of large scale mobile payments systems that have launched in China and around the world. Among the biggest names include Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and WeChat Pay from Tencent, as well as Alipay from Alibaba. These are all available in the largest smartphone market in the world, which is the Chinese marketplace.
Mi Pay users will also be able to take advantage of added mobile wallet features. Aside from debit and credit cards, they can also add public transportation cards. This way, they can avoid the need to dig a card out of a wallet or bag when they likely already have their smartphones in their hands.
In order to use Xiaomi Mi Pay, the smartphone must be near field communication (NFC) enabled. The NFC technology makes it possible for the device to communicate the necessary information with either a tap against the reader or by waving the device in front of it. In the name of mobile security, the NFC technology using smartphones underwent tests to ensure they could withstand a range of non-invasive and invasive attacks to break through encryption and reach private data. Moreover, this mobile wallet uses multiple authentication mechanisms to verify transactions.
