UnionPay teams with Apple, Samsung in mobile payment market

BEIJING - China’s State-backed bank card operator, China UnionPay, has announced plans to team with smartphone makers including Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics to challenge Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent in China’s fast-growing mobile payment market.

Although negotiations are still in process, UnionPay has indicated it is confident the partnerships will go through following a formal announcement in December. Sources told Caixin that UnionPay plans to negotiate separate partnerships with a number of Chinese smartphone makers, including Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE and Lenovo.

Each individual partnership is designed to help shoppers breeze through checkouts by waving smartphones at UnionPay point-of-sale terminals. Smartphones and terminals would be linked via near-field communication (NFC) and software that device owners download from a bank website.

What the current negotiations are still hashing out is exactly how the new service – called “Quickpass” – would mesh with existing ApplePay and Samsung Pay systems, which are available to owners of iPhone and Galaxy devices outside China. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).