Hey Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi just launched tap-to-pay in China
Like Apple and Samsung users in China, Xiaomi smartphone owners are now able to "tap to pay" at contactless terminals in stores. But Xiaomi users will have an additional feature -- they can also tap to pay on public transportation in six big cities there.
Specifically, those cities are Shanghai and Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangdong, Suzhou and Wuhan.
This makes Xiaomi the first smartphone maker to successfully support contactless payments on buses and trains in China, beating bigger players to the punch.
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Mashable understands that the payment feature called Mi Pay comes to existing Xiaomi phones that have NFC chips. Xiaomi already started trialling public transit payment earlier this year in Shanghai and Shenzhen, based on local reports.
Getting phones to work with public transport payment can be a fairly complicated process because of different standards maintained by various NFC chip makers. Apple, for instance, plans to embed a new chip in a future iPhone models in order to support the system used in Japan.
To pay on trains in Singapore, users need to get a new SIM card with EZ-Link's NFC chip embedded in it -- a troublesome process made only more restrictive because it works with a limited range of smartphone models.
EZ-Link is the country's contactless payment card on buses and trains.
How to add your bank card to Mi Pay
On the credit card payment front, Apple was first in February to get it going in China, followed by Samsung in March.
Like Samsung Pay and Apple Pay before it, Xiaomi signed up China UnionPay to ensure it has the best possible coverage in the country. China UnionPay is the country's largest interbank network that has a reported five million contactless point-of-sale terminals in China.
At launch, Mi Pay will support credit cards from 20 banks in the country, including major banks like the Bank of China and China Construction Bank.
Topics Xiaomi
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
