You can now pay for public transport in China's capital with Android phones
If you've got a newish Android model in Beijing, good news -- you can most likely pay for your train and bus rides with a wave of your phone.
The Chinese capital has beat out many other world cities by unlocking NFC payments for public transport.
Users with any NFC-enabled Android device can download the metro payment app, top up their account, and use it at train and bus gantries.
It's likely to work with most current models -- an estimated 160 on the market, from makers like Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, local reports estimate.
According to the Beijing Municipal Administration and Communication Card company, 200,000 mobile commuting payments have been made daily, since it started trialing the system in June, on just one of Beijing's lines.
The 200,000 is also just 2 percent of daily total payments too, so expect that number to go up dramatically after this week.
Not for Apple iPhones — yet
Alas, the mobile payment feature isn't for iPhones yet, because Apple hasn't enabled developer access to the NFC chip in its phones.
But that appears set to change in the near future, as iOS 11 becomes available. According to Chinese tech blogs, the public transport card operator is working to extend its app to the upcoming iPhone operating system version, because iOS 11 will offer developers deeper access to the iPhone's NFC chip.
Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun, celebrated the news with a Weibo post listing out the six Xiaomi models that will work on public transportation:
"Apple users must be in tears," a commenter said in reply to Lei Jun.
China is zooming ahead in mobile payment
The development of mobile payment in China continues to leapfrog the rest of the world at a breakneck pace.
While Japan has allowed Android payment on public transport since 2011, it only managed to enable it for iPhones last year with an unconventional method -- getting Apple to add the country's proprietary Suica NFC chip in iPhone 7 models and Apple Watch Series 2 devices sold in Japan.
In South Korea, also considered a frontrunner in mobile payment, Android payment appears to have been available for the past couple of years for Androids (again, not the iPhone) via the T-money smart card app.
Elsewhere in the region, in cities like Singapore, implementation has lagged behind. The country offers public transport payment to a limited range of Android phones, and requires the installation of a special NFC-enabled SIM card. Meh.
New Yorkers will have to wait until at least 2021 for a similar system.
Until then, it looks like metro cards won't be going away for most of us.
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
