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Apple will partner with China's main bank card and payment firm
UnionPay, a state-controlled consortium that has a monopoly on
all yuan payment cards issued and used in the country.
The move will see Apple Pay take on Tencent's WeChat Payment and
Alipay, the crown jewel of ecommerce king Alibaba's affiliate
Ant Financial, the top player in China's fast-growing online
payments market.
Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and
services, said the tie-up with UnionPay and leading local banks
would help Apple Pay give Chinese shoppers a "convenient,
private and secure payment" option.
"China is an extremely important market for Apple," he said.
China, the world's second-largest economy, is one of Apple's
most important markets for iPhone and tablet sales, but until
now the firm has been kept out of its online payments market.
Online transactions are booming in China, boosted by the
proliferation of hundreds of millions of smartphones that are
being used for everything from paying for taxis and meals to
buying goods at High Street stores.
In July, China proposed regulations to shake up the online
payment services sector, where companies which own payment
systems can reap huge profits by charging transaction fees.
UnionPay said in a statement on Friday it also planned to tie up
with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's <005930.KS> payment system,
Samsung Pay, which was launched earlier this year.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Kshitiz Goliya in
Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Stephen Coates)
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