Huawei renews effort in mobile payments amid Beijing’s moves to boost industry competition

Name: How mobile payments impact people’s lives in China
Uploaded: 2021-10-06T10:47:10.000Z
Duration: 2 min 40 s
Description: How mobile payments impact people’s lives in China

Beset by US sanctions, Huawei has started to ramp up its mobile payments service after gaining a nationwide licence from a corporate acquisition in March

Its Huawei Pay app has an opportunity to become competitive against industry giants Alipay and WeChat Pay, according to analysts

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Huawei Technologies Co now has a nationwide mobile payments licence that enables it to directly compete against Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay. Photo: AP

Josh Ye

Published: 6:47pm, 6 Oct 2021Updated: 11:05pm, 6 Oct 2021

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co, beset by US trade sanctions that have weakened its core smartphone business, has started to ramp up operations of its mobile payments service after acquiring a nationwide licence.

This development enhances Huawei’s position, according to analysts, to become one of the major third-party digital payments providers in China, the world’s biggest smartphone and internet market.

The Shenzhen-based company has offered participants to its developer conference later this month the option to pay for their tickets via the new Huawei Zhifu function under its Huawei Pay app. Those who use the service are entitled to a 50 yuan (US$7.75) discount.

That followed the company’s acquisition of a nationwide mobile payments licence from its purchase of Shenzhen Xunlian Zhifu Network in March, according to a report by China Securities Journal. Since 2016, the business development of mobile wallet app Huawei Pay mainly relied on the mobile payments service of state-owned UnionPay, the country’s top bank card clearing service.

“The future mobile payments market [in China] could become a three-way race between Alipay, WeChat Pay and Huawei Pay, which would break the current duopoly,” said Guo Tao, deputy director of China International Electronic Commerce Centre, an agency under the Ministry of Commerce, in a recent post on microblogging site Weibo.

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How mobile payments impact people’s lives in China

“By relying on Huawei’s enormous ecosystem, Huawei Pay can quickly boost its scale and market share, making it the biggest competitor to Alipay and WeChat Pay,” Guo said.

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