Apple and China's UnionPay have announced a partnership to bring Apple Pay to China.
China's UnionPay cardholders will be able to easily add their bank cards to Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, giving apple a market of over 1 billion people.
“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay.
“We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPayQuickPass,” according to GSM Arena. The Cupertino-based company also revealed that the service will start rolling out in China "as soon as early 2016," following the required tests and certification by Chinese regulators. A specific date, however, was not revealed. China UnionPay’sQuickPass and Apple Pay together will protect customer payment information through industry-leading payment tokenization technology.
Users can use the software using a unique Device Account Number assigned, encrypted and securely stored in a dedicated chip called the Secure Element on the devices. Each transaction is also authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code. Iran currently, due to sanctions placed on its banking system, does not offer Union Pay nor has access to international banking system. When sanctions are removed by the end February, systems like this could be in place by the end of 2016, given the rate of digital banking services in Iran.
