Handset maker Huawei has partnered with bank card association China UnionPay for the roll out of Huawei Pay, an NFC-based mobile payment service that makes use of tokenization technology and is expected to be available on a wide range of Huawei handsets. More
Apple has added another 48 banks and credit unions to its list of Apple Pay supporting financial institutions in the US and a further three banks in China, “notably including Ally Bank, one of the last major national US banks that had not supported the mobile wallet technology,” Macnn reports... More
Luxury watchmaker Swatch will focus its smartwatch activities on its plastic Swatch brand before considering the technology for its pricier models... More
Handset maker Huawei is to launch its own mobile payment service in China in cooperation with Bank of China... More
Alipay parent Ant Financial is planning to raise up to 20bn yuan (US$3.1bn) in its current funding round at a valuation of more than $50bn, according to The Wall Street Journal... More
Chinese shoppers activated 3m bank cards with Apple Pay within two days of the mobile payment service’s launch, according to China Merchants Bank... More
Apple has added a further 27 banks and credit unions to its list of Apple Pay supporting financial institutions in the US... More
A “small handful” of major French banks are now poised to sign deals to bring Apple Pay to France “by the end of the year”, Les Echos reports, following months of negotiations over the share of transaction fees Apple should receive from card issuers... More
Chinese internet giant Tencent has made its WeChat Pay platform available to overseas vendors so they can serve Chinese consumers when they travel abroad... More
Payment networks China UnionPay and Visa have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Shanghai to collaborate on “providing cardholders with more convenient, secure and highly efficient payment services” with a focus on security, innovation and financial inclusion... More
PARTNER NEWS: NFC pioneer NXP and mobile processor maker Qualcomm have extended a collaboration which saw NXP’s NFC and embedded secure element (eSE) solutions built into reference designs for Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, 600, 400 and 200 processor based platforms to now also include pre-validation for NFC-based transit services, particularly those in China. More
Banks supporting Apple Pay in China will pay approximately half the amount in fees that US banks are paying to support the service — and may have negotiated a lengthy initial holiday period, according to Caixin... More
Samsung Pay now has approximately five million users in South Korea and the US who have processed more than $500m through the mobile payment service in the first six months since its launch. The service is due to be rolled out in China next month, Samsung has revealed, followed by a global expansion to Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, the UK and Canada later in the year. More
More than 30m Chinese consumers signed up to Apple Pay during its first day of launch in the country, China’s People’s Daily reports... More
Apple Pay has begun rolling out across China, letting consumers pay in-store with compatible Apple devices using their China UnionPay credit and debit cards at QuickPass-enabled POS terminals as well as make purchases within participating mobile apps. More
Customers of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) will be able to use Apple Pay from 18 February, the bank has confirmed in a series of tweets reported by Reuters... More
Apple Pay could launch in China this week following confirmation from China Guangfa Bank... More
Consumers across the globe will use their mobile phones to spend a total of US$620bn on all forms of mobile transaction this year, representing a 37.8% year-on-year growth from $450bn in 2015, research from TrendForce reveals. By 2017, total mobile payment revenue will reach $780bn, climbing to $930bn in 2018 and $1.08tn in 2019. More
Chinese consumers using taxi hailing app Uber will soon be able to pay for their journeys using Ant Financial’s mobile payment platform Alipay when travelling abroad... More
Chinese ecommerce giant Tencent is testing its WeChat Wallet service with users in Hong Kong... More