Xiaomi Launches Mobile Pay With Support From 20 Chinese Banks

Xiaomi has announced the launch of its newest service: Mi Pay. The service is the phone company’s attempt at both mobile payments and public transport ticketing. Currently, the service supports both credit and debit cards from more than 20 Chinese banks. A wide variety of banks have already agreed to form a partnership with Xiaomi, including Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, and China Construction Bank.

Users who are looking to use Mi Pay must follow 4 easy steps. The first step is to download and install the Mi Wallet app on their phones. Once the user launches the application, he will be prompted to select a credit or a debit card. Once the type of card is selected, the user will have to enter the details of the bank card and those of the account holder. The final step of the process involves an extra security measure – SMS verification. Each Mi Wallet account can hold up to 8 different bank cards. Moreover, users are eligible for various promotions that may be offered by their respective bank.

In order to launch their service, Xiaomi also partnered up with Secure Element for their hardware security solutions. Software security is ensured through tokenization – a process through which the sensitive information related to a user’s bank card is substituted with a non-sensitive token. Furthermore, an extra layer of security is offered by the need to use fingerprint recognition for transactions, making Xiaomi’s service secure against most types of digital fraud.

With this step forward, Xiaomi has entered an already competitive market. Currently, services from Apple, Samsung, Alipay, and TenCent are already available for Chinese customers. Moreover, following Xiaomi’s announcement, Huawei, one of the main local competitors has also announced its entry on the mobile pay market with their proprietary Huawei Pay.