Apple Pay looks to be heading to China, having reportedly reached a preliminary agreement the with UnionPay point of sales network, the biggest payment and clearing network in the country.
No agreements have been signed with any banks linking local cards and Apple pay, according to Bloomberg, but Apple Pay could potentially be introduced as early as 2016.
There are concerns about the fee that Apple charges, 0.15% per transaction from the 2% paid by US retailers. Caixin magazine said in total some Chinese retailers pay only 0.38%.
If the move goes ahead, Apple Pay could be rolled out across over 5 million NFC enable POS systems in China, and help UnionPay and the banks in their battle with Alibaba and other tech firms in the payment market.
Alibaba’s Aliplay offering took up 83% of the third-party mobile payments in China in 2014. In the same year, mobile-payment transactions in China soared 134%, totalling 22.6 trillion yuan ($3.5 trillion).
