Samsung will officially launch its mobile payment app Samsung Pay this month, a representative announced on Saturday, March 5, shortly after Apple launched its own payment service, turning up competition in the Chinese market, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
According to its representative, Samsung Pay will be launched via a partnership with China UnionPay, a bank card clearing service provider that will manage all bank card transactions on the Chinese mainland.
Samsung Pay has attracted 5 million registered users in six months, with transaction volume via the app exceeding $500 million, following its launch in the Republic of Korea and then the United States in the latter half of 2015.
Since late February, Samsung has started public tests for the app in China, the report said.
To complete transactions, Samsung Pay users can place their mobile phones near the card slots or the NFC reading areas of compatible point-of-sale (POS) terminals.
The report said that Samsung Pay can be used with POS terminals without the NFC function, in contrast with Apple Pay which needs UnionPay's NFC compatible POS machines. With the Samsung service, users can also withdraw money from automatic teller machines (ATM).
Samsung said it also plans to incorporate in the app card-swiping functions for public transit in some Chinese cities.
Samsung Pay has also partnered with seven banks in China for the public tests, as it expects more banks to jump on the bandwagon.
The company said that the service was aimed at attracting more new users in the mobile market.
Mobile payment is an emerging market in China as 620 million people or 90.1 percent of the nation's Internet users last year used a smart device to go online, the China Internet Network Information Center said.
According to research firm Analysys, the third-party mobile payment market in China was valued at 16.36 trillion yuan in 2015. Analysys data showed that Alibaba and Tencent are the major players in the market, as Alibaba's Alipay held 71.51 percent of the market in the third quarter last year, while Tencent's Tenpay had taken a 16-percent share.