Apple is in talks with Alibaba in order to introduce Apple Pay in China for NFC Transactions via Apple Pay.
Latest Alibaba news is that it has been chatting with the tech giant, Apple. The US-based tech giant is very eager to introduce its Apple Pay to the Chinese consumers, for that it has approached Alibaba.
The talks were acknowledged by the CEO of Apple Inc., Tim Cook while giving interview to Xinhua news agency of China, as of last week. The CEO did not mention the details regarding these conversations but expressed that "we very much want to get Apple Pay in China".
Apple Pay was launched in October 2014 and has been the tech giant’s first step into the mobile payments market, precisely the contactless one. The users can use their iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or the latest addition into Apple gadgets, the Apple Watch to pay for the items via the NFC (near field communication) on the go at the retailers that support this feature.
The tech giant had been reportedly drumming about this feature and has tried at its fullest to make it accessible and usable to the end-users in U.S in majority. However, in order for the feature to take off, its introduction to the global market is necessary and notably, Chinese market is the largest smartphone market in the world. In China, the Apple’s share has jumped to first position this year and the tech giant is taking advantage of that fully.
Cook might be saying that he is “very bullish” regarding the Apple Pay in China but the road to this adoption in Asian market is not that easy.
Alibaba news reports that the tech giant’s talks with the Chinese banks are not going further in a successful way. Conventionally, Apple gets the 0.15 percent share of the 2% fee that is paid by the retail merchants on each payment via credit card using Apple Pay. The banks in China are balking at the company for taking a large amount of section for each transaction.
The discussion between the Chinese e-commerce giant and Apple would be an alternative way for the US based tech giant to enter the Chinese market and introduce Apple Pay. In 2014, the Chinese e-commerce had been looking into the talks with Apple for the partnership on Apple Pay as the Wall Street stated. On the other side, Alibaba also owns Alipay which has a huge amount of 300 million users. UnionPay, the only NFC transactions channel running in China sets the rates for the merchants to pay of the system. The market control by Alipay could be larger than what Alipay could possibly handle.
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