Huawei teams up with China UnionPay to roll out NFC mobile payments

"But now the testing phase is over", the Chinese smartphone giant said.

Ltd. has announced it is joining forces with China UnionPay (CUP) to launch a new mobile payment service in China, called "Huawei Pay", by sometime next month.

Users of Huawei smartphones equipped with a fingerprint sensor as well as data transmission technology called near-field communication, or NFC, can download a Huawei Pay app to use the service, the Shenzhen-based company said. The new partnership comes after the recent launch of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay in mainland China.

UnionPay, which holds a monopoly on bank-card payments in the country, also works with Apple Pay, which launched in China last month.

Following a pilot, Huawei is rolling out its service across China, enabling customers to make contactless payments by tapping their handsets against POS readers while pressing the fingerprint reader.

Joswiak said Chinese users were able to add around 3 million payment cards to Apple Pay within three days after the initial launch of the service in February.

Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the technology provides Huawei Pay users more secure payments because it requires the user's fingerprint to approve every transaction.

Major technology companies, both domestic and worldwide have entered into the fast-growing mobile payments market in China. In China, Huawei was the biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, with a 15.2% market share, followed closely by Apple's 14.6% and Chinese competitor Xiaomi Inc.'s 14.4%, according to IDC. Despite a slowdown in China's smartphone market, Huawei's growth in the sector shows its ability to strive in deteriorating conditions and compete in a highly competitive market.

China's smartphone market, once dominated by foreign suppliers such as Apple and Samsung, is becoming a more domestically oriented market, with the homegrown mobile makers rising swiftly to the top.

"If there are opportunities overseas, we may consider launching Huawei Pay world-wide", a Huawei spokesman said.

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Source: Huawei teams up with China UnionPay to roll out NFC mobile payments