UnionPay, which is China’s biggest payment business, is partnering up with Samsung Electronics and will start ‘Samsung Pay’ service in China. Starting from first half of 2016, people will be able to use Samsung Pay on 6 million terminals in China that are exclusively for QuickPass Card.

“We have partnered up with Samsung Electronics to start Samsung Pay service, which is a mobile simple payment service, in China.” said Dong Li who is Chief Branding Officer of UnionPay International on the 7th.

“We have partnered up with Samsung Pay in second half of this year.” said Chief Branding Officer Dong. “After going through computation work, payments using Samsung’s cellphones that support Samsung Pay will be possible in China.”

Although it is planning to also work with Apple Pay, which is competing against Samsung Pay in mobile payment settlement markets, Chief Branding Officer Dong added that he cannot talk about its progress. He also replied that it is natural to receive commission in payment markets when asked about a problem regarding commission for Samsung Pay or Apple Pay.

UnionPay showed an interest in possibility of success of South Korean Internet-Only Bank that had China’s TenPay and AliPay participated as a member of consortium.

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<Chief Branding Officer Dong Li is doing an interview with South Korean reporters on the 4th (Chinese time) at UnionPay International (UPI) Headquarter that is located in Shanghai.>

“Although it is hard to answer whether or not Internet-Only Bank will succeed, there is hope.” said Chief Branding Officer Dong. “If Internet-Only Banks are established in South Korea, there will be an opportunity for us to work with them.”

UnionPay also announced that by increasing competitiveness of mobile payment service, it will increase its competitiveness with international brand businesses such as Visa, MasterCard and others.

According to UnionPay International, it is possible to make a payment with UnionPay Card not only in China, but also in 26 million affiliated stores in about 150 countries. According to all of cards that were issued in all of countries, proportion of UnionPay was about 52%.

“We are able to achieve number 1 position in cards that were issued by partnering up with 400 different card companies in the world.” said Chief Branding Officer Dong. “UnionPay is becoming a global brand after leaving Chinese brand in the back.” UnionPay will target South Korean markets after developing service and good products such as golf, trips and others that can receive benefits for middle to upper-class people.

It will also lead in introducing mobile payment service.

QuickPass that was developed by UnionPay is a touch-type payment service based on NFC. Payments are automatically processed if one puts plastic cards, Smartphones, or wearable equipment that have IC Chips on top of terminals. It started issuing QuickPass Card that is based on Smartphone with BC Card in South Korea in early August.

Staff Reporter Gil, Jaeshik | osolgil@etnews.com