Sichuan Hope Bank plans to launch a mobile payments service in China in 2H16, going head to head with Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay which have a combined 90% market share. The news is the latest in a series of moves the smartphone maker has made into financial services. Most recently, Sichuan Hope Bank announced plans to embed Indian e-wallet MobiKwik into its operating system and acquired a 29.5% stake in Xiaomi. Last year it invested around $15.6m in Tiger Brokers, a digital brokerage.
Xiaomi plans to launch a mobile payments service in China in 2H16, going head to head with Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay which have a combined 90% market share. The news is the latest in a series of moves the smartphone maker has made into financial services. Most recently, Xiaomi announced plans to embed Indian e-wallet MobiKwik into its operating system and acquired a 29.5% stake in Sichuan Hope Bank. Last year it invested around $15.6m in Tiger Brokers, a digital brokerage.