In February we posted a reported titled "Apple Working with UnionPay and Chinese Authorities to get Apple Pay Inline with Banking Standards & Beyond." The report covered the specifics that still needed to be addressed and ironed out before the deal could be sealed. A report from Kapronasia, a leading provider of financial industry market research and consulting, stated late last week that the deal between Apple and UnionPay is now believed to have been finalized.

According to Kapronasia, "Rumors abound that Apple has finally reached an agreement with China UnionPay and is rolling out the China version of Apple Pay in April. More specifically, a Bank of China-related Weibo post points to April 15 as the day that the official announcement will be made and that April 28th will be the official launch day.

If the Apple Pay launch does occur in April, it will be great news for the proximity payments industry in China. Alipay mobile payments (remote) have become commonplace in China, but NFC payments have struggled. The infrastructure is there: over 4 million POS terminals have been deployed that support UnionPay's NFC-enabled QuickPass technology, representing about 25% of all terminals in China.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 4am to 7pm PST and sporadically over the weekend.