You can’t land a much bigger whale than the Chinese financial marketplace.
And it looks like Apple is headed there with Apple Pay.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has confirmed earlier reports that Apple Pay would launch in China this week, its social media posts stating that its service will go live on Thursday, February 18th. A further 18 lenders are signed up to the service, China Guangfa Bank Co and China Construction Bank Corp, will launch on the same day as ICBC.
Apple has been working to land this deal for a long time, creating a Shanghai-based company to manage the rollout back in September of last year, with this month long rumored to be the target launch date. China will be the fifth country to go live, after the USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Even so, Apple will still have to fight its way into an established marketplace, complete with well-established mobile payment services.
Dominating those payments are China’s two biggest Internet companies: social networking and gaming firm Tencent Holdings and e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding. Tencent operates WeChat Payment, while Ant Financial runs Alipay.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.