The Huawei Pay Android service may be coming to the United States, as suggested by a new trademark application which the Chinese original equipment manufacturer submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office on Saturday. Huawei’s application is still being reviewed by the USPTO and will presumably be approved at some point in 2018, with the agency usually taking several months to assign such filings to examining attorneys. News of Huawei’s latest move comes less than a month after the Shenzhen, China-based tech giant filed for an identical trademark in Europe where the European Union Intellectual Property Office is also still examining its request.
In light of recent developments, it seems that Huawei is in the process of preparing for a wider release of its mobile payments solution which the company originally introduced in its home country in early 2016. Like many other contemporary services of its kind, Huawei Pay employs near-field communication (NFC) to connect with compatible terminals and facilitate contactless payments. The Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer has yet to make any major announcements regarding the expanded availability of Huawei Pay and it’s still unknown whether the company already managed to negotiate any partnerships with U.S. banks and other financial institutions in the country. The filing submitted to the USPTO that was originally discovered by Dutch outlet Mobielkopen is accompanied by the official logo of the service which can be seen above.
Huawei is currently in the process of teasing its next Android flagship that’s set to be officially unveiled on October 16 but it’s unlikely that the Mate 10 will support Huawei Pay out of the box in markets outside of China. While the device is likely to be commercially available by November, the timing of Huawei’s trademark applications suggests that the firm won’t have the U.S. and European trademarks secured before next year. Such a turn of events would allow for Huawei Pay support to be added to the Mate 10 via an over-the-air (OTA) update post-launch, marking the start of the company’s effort to compete with Android Pay on the Old Continent and stateside. Apart from possible support for an alternative contactless payment solution, the upcoming flagship from the Chinese tech giant is also said to be extremely AI-focused and ship with a new high-end chip in the form of the recently announced HiSilicon Kirin 970.