Tim Cook Says China “Top Of The List For Apple Pay”

When exploring global expansion for Apple Pay, China is the highest priority for Apple CEO Tim Cook, even though the service has yet to launch there.

Cook, in an interview with China’s influential Xinhua News Agency, said that he wants to understand the Chinese payment system before asking banks, Chinese payments networks and retailers to sign on to the service, but he placed a high priority on launching the service locally.

“We want to bring Apple Pay to China. I’m convinced there will be enough people that want to use it. It’s going to be successful,” Cook said. “China is a really key market for us. Everything we do, we are going to work it here. Apple Pay is on the top of the list.”

In China, the marketplace realities are quite different from the U.S. when dealing with both the iPhone 6/6 Plus and Apple Pay. The iPhone has a somewhat more challenging road in China as it is third in current marketshare, with 16 percent of the smartphone market, compared with 21 percent for Xiaomi and 23 percent for Samsung.
On Apple Pay, however, resistance will likely be less than in the U.S., given the dramatically higher rate of NFC acceptance in China.

Cook’s visit coincided with the fourth plenary session of the Central Committee of the Community Party of China (CPC) and Cook met with Chinese vice premier Ma Kai, a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, Xinhua reported.

Cook also sent a message to Walmart and followers of its MCX CurrentC mobile payment system, slated to launch next year. He asked that the group allows its supporters to accept b oth Apple Pay and CurtentC and let shoppers decide which they prefer.

Macworld noted that Cook is also going to have to court Union Pay if he wants Apple Pay to have a smooth launch.

“For Apple Pay to be successful in China, it will almost certainly require cooperation with Union Pay. Many of the country’s biggest banks are part of the Union Pay system, which links more than a million ATMs and is accepted in around 12 million stores both across China and often foreign destinations popular with Chinese tourists,” Macworld reported. “Union Pay launched an NFC payment card last year called Quick Pass that is based on the same underlying standard as Apple Pay. However, the Union Pay system doesn’t currently allow credit transactions. It allows consumers to make purchases with money already stored and loaded into the card. The payment network signed a deal in 2013 with China Mobile to offer NFC payments on smartphones. Unlike Apple Pay, which relies on a chip inside the phone, the China Mobile system uses an NFC chip embedded in the phone’s SIM card.”