“Apple Inc’s Apple Pay mobile payment system will be available in China from Feb. 18 for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) customers, bank representatives said in social media posts on Tuesday,” Shu Zhang and Paul Carsten report for Reuters. “ICBC is China’s biggest lender by assets.” “The lender is set to be joined by a raft of peers: Apple’s China website lists 19 Chinese lenders as official Apple Pay partners, and state media reported two other lenders will also go live with the service from Feb. 18,” Zhang and Carsten report. “China is the world’s biggest smartphone market. By the end of 2015, 358 million people, more than the population of the United States, had already taken to paying by mobile phone, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.” “Dominating those payments are China’s two biggest Internet companies: social networking and gaming firm Tencent Holdings Ltd and e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, through its Internet finance affiliate Ant Financial Services Group,” Zhang and Carsten report. “Tencent operates WeChat Payment, while Ant Financial runs Alipay.” Read more in the full article here. MacDailyNews Take: 去吧， Pay ，去吧！
Apple Pay, Apple 's mobile payment system, is set to become available in China from the end of 2015 to customers of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ( ICBC ). According to ICBC bank officials, the country’s largest lender will be joined by 19 other Chinese lenders, and two other prospective lenders, as its official Apple partners. ICBC suggests that China is now the world’s biggest smartphone market, with 318 million mobile payments users by Thursday 18 February 2016 . Alibaba and Tencent are currently monopolising the Chinese mobile payments market through their WeChat and Alipay payment platforms.