Apple and Samsung have inked deals with UnionPay to enter the mobile payments space in China by early 2016, according to a report by Bloomberg late Thursday.
We’d already heard rumors last month that Apple Pay would launch in China by February.
Union Pay is China’s largest payment and clearing network, and its customers will be able to link their UnionPay-branded bank cards to Apple Pay and Samsung Pay on their smartphones.
Mobile payments from Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s Tenpay currently dominate in China, a space estimated to be worth around $3.5 trillion in 2014.
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Alipay remains the clear leader, with close to 83 percent of China’s third-party mobile payment market, as of last year.
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