Smartphones have become integral parts of our lives, we carry them pretty much everywhere with us, so it makes sense a number of companies are trying to make them our wallets as well. We’ve seen a number of mobile payment services launched in the past, including the three best-known ones, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay. Now, in addition to the three aforementioned solutions, Huawei has also rolled out their payment service last month, and you guessed it, it’s called Huawei Pay.
Well, it seems like yet another China-based company is looking to board that train, and it’s fairly easy to guess who, Xiaomi. According to the company’s CEO, Lei Jun, their payment service will be an NFC-based mobile payment solution, similar to Apple Pay. Xiaomi is looking to compete with Alibaba and Tencent, who are currently owning the Chinese mobile payments market. Now, Xiaomi will partner up with China UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard in order to make this happen, and it is possible that the company will include their payment solution in the upcoming Xiaomi Max phablet, though that’s just a guess at this point. The company’s CEO also said that the service works really well, and the company is currently working with banks in order to implement their payment solution to MIUI.
So, ti seems like Xiaomi Pay will be very similar to what we’ve seen from other companies, but will be integrated with Xiaomi’s devices. Company’s CEO did not mention when we might expect XIaomi Pay to hit the market, but judging by his post, the service might be officially announced very soon. This also suggests that the vast majority of the company’s upcoming devices might ship with both a fingerprint scanner and NFC, so that they can take advantage of Xiaomi Pay, which we guess Xiaomi will heavily push in the Chinese market, at least in the beginning. We still don’t have any specific info regarding the service, so it is possible Xiaomi will introduce some new features we haven’t seen thus far, but we’ll have to wait and see, so stay tuned, we’ll report back soon.