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NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Adding mobile payments capabilities to flagship smartphones appears to be a must-have feature as OEMs fight for market share in China’s hotly contested phone market.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung’s announcement today of its move into China with Samsung Pay helped the OEM make good on its objective of launching in China by the first quarter, though the launch has happened well after rival device makers Apple and Huawei launched their own mobile payments services in China.

NFC Times Exclusive – Some major Chinese banks are telling their customers that Apple Pay will launch on Thursday in China, which will become Apple’s biggest market for its payments service after the U.S.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple has announced overdue plans to launch Apple Pay in China early next year, touting a list of 15 major banks that will enable customers to load their credit and debit cards in its Wallet app, including China’s big four state-owned banks. Meanwhile, Samsung followed with an announcement of its planned launch of Samsung Pay in China, which was also expected.

NFC Times Exclusive – There’s more evidence that Apple is gearing up to launch Apple Pay in China early next year, and not only with China’s big four state-run banks, as was earlier reported.

NFC Times Exclusive – Seven major Chinese banks have launched NFC mobile payments using host card emulation, or are planning to do so soon, as they and payment network China UnionPay try to roll out mobile payments more widely and guard their turf against such Internet players as Alipay and Tencent Holdings. 

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – At least one more of China’s big four banks, and perhaps two, have reportedly introduced mobile payments with host card emulation, following Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which launched HCE-based service in May.

Samsung Electronics reportedly says it has an agreement with payment network China UnionPay that would enable embedded chips in more than 3 million of its devices in China with China UnionPay’s contactless-payments service, though no banks have yet been mentioned as issuers.

Payment network China UnionPay and China-based handset maker ZTE have disclosed an agreement to enable contactless payment on embedded chips in two of ZTE’s latest high-end Android phones.

China UnionPay has announced that 15 banks now have access to its TSM platform, while a total of 30 banks have signed a cooperation agreement to eventually use the platform.