Mi Pay is launched in collaboration with China UnionPay.
Chinese giant Xiaomi, the 4th largest smartphone maker, has announced its collaboration with bankcard association China UnionPay to launch Mi Pay NFC-based mobile payments service in the domestic market.
The mobile payments platform runs on the company’s Mi 5 handsets and makes use of biometric authentication and tokenization. Xiaomi reports that in the beginning it will support only credit cards from 20 banks and debit cards from 12 banks including Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank as well as public transportation cards from six cities across the country. Mi Pay users will get benefits and rewards offered by the banks.
“Users can simply add their China UnionPay and public transportation cards to the Mi Wallet app,” Xiaomi says. “For transactions, Mi Pay employs tokenization to protect plain text credit card information and makes users verify their fingerprint for maximum security. If a device is lost, users can turn off Mi Pay through the official website.”
The process of binding a bank card to Mi Pay is as easy as possible – user should open the Mi Wallet app, select the option to add a bank card, key in the bank card details and go through SMS verification for final confirmation. Xiaomi enables tying up to eight cards to a single device.
When Mi Pay option is added, users will no longer need to swipe a card when making a payment. Instead, they will need to hold their device near China UnionPay’s QuickPass-enabled POS terminals and the bank card details will pop up. The device will be activated as soon as fingerprint verification is confirmed.
“After cooperating with China UnionPay over the past three years, Xiaomi is now truly excited about our joint partnership to launch Mi Pay,” says Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun. “We believe that Mi Pay will be a key driving force in promoting the development of China’s mobile payments industry and deliver much more convenience to our users.”
The news from Xiaomi follows the last month’s announcement from Google that Android Pay is working on a new feature that will allow users to find their device’s NFC chip. As Android Police informed, they found a piece of code inside the app that suggests Google will integrate the service. The code now mentions only 18 models, including all of the recent Nexus devices, many of Samsung devices, from the newer S7 Edge going back to the older Galaxy S5 models, as well as other phones, such as the LG G4 and the Motorola Droid Turbo 2.
“New strings in the Android Pay app show that it will soon educate users about the location of the transmitter in their phones so they won’t have to go hunting on their own. The guide will be accessible through a command titled “How to pay” in the overflow menu,” Android Police wrote.
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