Huawei Pay debuts in China

2016 is a crucial year for the mobile payments market, as most mid-range handsets that launch these days offer support for the new payment methods and the fingerprint reader becomes a regular feature. China is a huge market, and everyone targets it - both Apple and Samsung will introduce their mobile payments services by the end of the year, but the local companies also join the fight.

Huawei Pay is a new mobile payments service that only has support from the Bank of China for now, but things will surely change as it expands its reach. The service uses NFC connectivity, and the technology is already present in the Huawei Mate S, a handset that reached the market back in December 2015.

In China, the market is dominated by Alibaba's Alipay, with more than 400 million users reported at the end of 2015. According to industry insiders, big local names like Xiaomi, ZTE, or Lenovo, are all working on their own mobile payments service. On the other hand, Alibaba plans to extend its reach to more than 500,000 shops overseas by the end of the year.