Apple of the East, Xiaomi, working on an Apple Pay competitor?


I wouldn’t say I wasn’t surprised when rumours of the upcoming Mi 5 hinted at NFC support. A technology that has a love-hate relationship with users coming to a 2016 phone after more than four of the company’s previous phones dropped support for it sounded astonishing indeed.

According to fresh news from China, Xiaomi could be working on a feature that could well warrant the use of NFC on the Mi 5… a mobile payment service.

According to IHS Analyst Kevin Wang, Xiaomi, along with Huawei and ZTE — three of the biggest names in the biggest smartphone market — could be working on an Apple Pay alternative.

Gizchina News of the week


Samsung debuted their alternative to the Apple service last year with the launch of the samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. China, however, seems to have an alternative of its own for a lot of services that the rest of the world considers standard. Weibo for Twitter, Baidu for Google, and WeChat for everything else. Speaking of, WeChat’s payment services are already massive in the country.

More Xiaomi Mi 5 news here and here

If there’s any truth to this bit of news, you should expect an announcement of this service (Mi Pay?) alongside the Mi 5 launch on the 24th later this month.

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13 Comments

  1. Freeje
    February 19, 2016

    Alipay also can be used to pay for restaurant meals and groceries at Wal-Mart.

  2. alan4195
    February 19, 2016

    Wouldn’t Huawei be the Apple of China now that they’ve surpassed Xiaomi in Chinese market-share?

    • balcobomber25
      February 19, 2016

      That would make Huawei the Samsung of China. But it’s more than just sales, Xiaomi has always been referred to as the Apple of China. Their devices usually look similar, their CEO dresses like Steve Jobbs for press conferences, MIUI is modeled after iOS and they have a loyal following most companies could only dream of.

      • Tajwar
        February 19, 2016

        Xiaomi in a nutshell!

      • Rob
        February 19, 2016

        They certainly have Balco 😉

        However couldn’t we also say the same of Vivo, after all they do PRICE their phones like Apple!!

        • balcobomber25
          February 19, 2016

          You could say it about a lot of companies. But no one tries as hard for that Apple image as Xiaomi does.

          This is one of the biggest copycat industries. Even Apple Pay isn’t original, Google Wallet was around 2 years prior and it was just so poorly marketed and utilized no one really knew about it.

  3. David Košič
    February 19, 2016

    I think they should work more on becoming the number one in China again.

  4. Guest
    February 19, 2016

    Alipay also can be used to pay for restaurant meals and groceries at Wal-Mart.

  5. AJ_74
    February 19, 2016

    Wouldn’t Huawei be the Apple of China now that they’ve surpassed Xiaomi in Chinese market-share?

    • balcobomber25
      February 19, 2016

      That would make Huawei the Samsung of China. But it’s more than just sales, Xiaomi has always been referred to as the Apple of China. Their devices usually look similar, their CEO dresses like Steve Jobbs for press conferences, MIUI is modeled after iOS and they have a loyal following most companies could only dream of.

    • Tajwar
      February 19, 2016

      Xiaomi in a nutshell!

    • Rob
      February 19, 2016

      They certainly have Balco 😉

      However couldn’t we also say the same of Vivo, after all they do PRICE their phones like Apple!!

    • balcobomber25
      February 19, 2016

      You could say it about a lot of companies. But no one tries as hard for that Apple image as Xiaomi does.

      This is one of the biggest copycat industries. Even Apple Pay isn’t original, Google Wallet was around 2 years prior and it was just so poorly marketed and utilized no one really knew about it.