The tech giant will be following Apple into that space and claims to support credit and debit cards from 9 banks.
Samsung has announced that its mobile payments service has now launched for the first time within the Chinese market, where it will be joining an exceptionally crowded space that already includes its top rival, Apple.
Apple Pay stepped into the second largest economy in the world almost a month and a half ago.
China also happens to be the largest smartphone market in the world and Samsung has managed to obtain a solid mobile payments partner within the country – UnionPay, a bank card provider. That provider also happens to have strong links to the Chinese central bank. Still, the battle will be uphill for Samsung as it is for every other provider within the country as the market has been established there for quite some time – a situation that is unlike most other countries in the world. Moreover, local mobile wallet providers have already taken a substantial lead within this ecosystem.
As a mobile payments company from a foreign country, the top competition for Samsung will likely be Apple.
Apple has a six week head start over Samsung, and it has also built a partnership with UnionPay, so it has a similar connection to the central bank in the country.
In terms of support, Samsung has said that its service is starting off by supporting the credit and debit cards from a total of 9 different Chinese banks. The mobile wallet can be used from any of its top-end Galaxy smartphones, but it has also promised that its mid-range devices will soon be supporting the mobile app.
Both Apple and Samsung will face a challenge trying to carve out a place for themselves within the highly competitive mobile ecosystem in China. By the summer of 2015, there were already 359 million online payment users in the country. That was an increase of nearly 18 percent over the start of that year, according to China Internet Network Information Center data.
Mobile payments transactions there were valued at about $1.4 trillion by mid 2015, which was a year over year increase of 57 percent.
