Samsung has partnered with China UnionPay to bring its Samsung Pay mobile payments service to China in early 2016. The announcement comes as Apple reveals that it has also partnered with the bank card organisation to bring Apple Pay to Chinese consumers next year.
“This collaboration between Samsung and China UnionPay will enable UnionPay cardholders to manage and use credit cards and debit cards on their smartphones via Samsung Pay,” Samsung says. “Samsung Pay-supported contactless payment can be accepted in most of the POS terminals in China, including QuickPass-enabled NFC POS terminals.
“Working with China UnionPay, Samsung Pay ensures secure transaction with a reliable triple-layered protection mechanism including fingerprint identification, tokenization and KNOX.”
“The products and technologies in Samsung Pay strictly comply with national mobile payment and financial industry standards in China,” the company adds. “Samsung Pay will receive relevant tests and certification as required by Chinese regulators before its official rollout to UnionPay cardholders in China as soon as early 2016.”
User experience
“With technological innovation, Samsung Pay expands the usage of mobile payments,” says Injong Rhee, executive VP at Samsung Electronics. “It simplifies the procedure for better user experience and adopts multi-layered protection to ensure security, allowing easier and safe mobile payment experiences.
“The collaboration with China UnionPay, coupled with the support from major UnionPay partner banks in China, will bring this secure and easy-to-use mobile payment solution to more Samsung mobile users.”
“With the rapid development of the mobile payment industry, China UnionPay is committed to open cooperation with other parties in the industry to provide more secure and more convenient products and services for consumers,” adds Chai Hongfeng, executive VP of China UnionPay.
“This cooperation between China UnionPay and Samsung will combine the strengths of the former in payment and the expertise of the latter in mobile terminals to jointly create brand new mobile payment experiences for consumers and to further expand the use base of UnionPay QuickPass brand.”
Samsung Pay made its debut in Korea in August 2015 and went on to launch in the US in September. Consumers using the service made an average of eight transactions in its first four weeks of launch.
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The chinese have already been using NFC on Samsung phones since October. Unionpay App is already in many App Stores and Play Store Hong Kong has had it since then too!
http://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-unionpay-launch-nfc-payment-service-in-china/
Yup, NFC World covered that:
http://www.nfcw.com/2014/10/02/331895/samsung-pay-lands-china/
Though that was in October *2014*, well before the announcement of the branded “Samsung Pay” offering last March, when it was just an anticipated arrival. It was a forerunner, a taste of things to come, rather than the arrival of what we now know as Samsung Pay in China.