Apple Pay is making its way into the Chinese market. Apparently this is due to Apple registering an entity in the Shanghai free-trade zone which will then be used to operate the Apple Pay business, or so the reports claim.
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Companies which want to launch online payment operation in China need to gain approvals from Chinese regulators like the central bank. Ltd. will include technical consulting, services and system integration in the field of payments, the database showed. Earlier this year, we told you that Apple was negotiating with China UnionPay, the lone bank in China that deals with interbank payments.
Hopefully for Apple, the existence of the China-based Apple Technology Service (Shanghai) Ltd marks a positive step on the road to debuting Apple Pay in the country, although the journey’s not over yet.
The founding of this new $13.4 million capital subsidiary, however, is a clear indication that Apple has managed to somehow move things along, meaning that it might finally have access to China’s vast market, with over 400 million digital payment users on Alipay alone. Even after extensive discussions with Alibaba and other major financial institutions, for Apple Pay to be available to the users in china, the country’s Apex bank would most likely have to sign off on it.
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Internet firm Tencent is also catching up with a similar service provided via its popular messaging application WeChat.
