Samsung Pay enters competitive China market
Samsung has launched its mobile payment service Samsung Pay in China, via a partnership with local player UnionPay.
The move is part of an aggressive expansion of the Samsung Pay service. Last month at Mobile World Congress, Samsung announced it would expand into new markets, such as the UK, Spain and Singapore.
Samsung follows Apple into China, which launched in the country also via a partnership with Union Pay.
It’s not just Apple that presents the company with strong competition. In the US and the UK, the mobile payments market is comparatively up for grabs as the behaviour for paying with your phone is still relatively nascent. Comparatively, businesses such as Alibaba via its Alipay service and Tencent via WeChat have already amassed significant scale via their online services.
In terms of scale, a simple comparison carried out by the Drum earlier this year shows how much is up for grabs for mobile payments in the country. WeChat alone carried out more transactions over Chinese New Year this year than PayPal had in the entirety of 2015.