“Apple Inc’s Apple Pay mobile payment system will be available in China from Feb. 18 for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) customers, bank representatives said in social media posts on Tuesday,” Shu Zhang and Paul Carsten report for Reuters. “ICBC is China’s biggest lender by assets.”
“The lender is set to be joined by a raft of peers: Apple’s China website lists 19 Chinese lenders as official Apple Pay partners, and state media reported two other lenders will also go live with the service from Feb. 18,” Zhang and Carsten report. “China is the world’s biggest smartphone market. By the end of 2015, 358 million people, more than the population of the United States, had already taken to paying by mobile phone, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.”
“Dominating those payments are China’s two biggest Internet companies: social networking and gaming firm Tencent Holdings Ltd and e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, through its Internet finance affiliate Ant Financial Services Group,” Zhang and Carsten report. “Tencent operates WeChat Payment, while Ant Financial runs Alipay.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 去吧， Pay ，去吧！
Expect a Boom
Do you think the Chinese will show their retail employees how to use Apple Pay? Perhaps they can then come here and train our retail employees. Win-win.
Well chances are they will be generally better educated, which might help.