We all know how OnePlus has demonstrated its prowess in the smartphone market and now the company has recently extended its domain into mobile payments exclusive to china as it had promised back in September at the launch of the OnePlus 7T and the 7T Pro. Named as OnePlus Pay, the service was in beta testing for a while, and now with its announcement, the first batch of phones that are set to receive support is OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro handsets dispatched in china.
This news came via a post on OnePlus’ Chinese forum from a moderator. The post also said that these features will be deployed phase-wise and that other devices will be getting the update in the coming weeks.
OnePlus Pay is currently limited to China and exclusive to HydrogenOS (Chinese OS with no Google Play services). The service is based on NFC (Near Field Communications) similar to widely famous Samsung Pay, and users can use their OnePlus smartphones to pay via a POS machine that supports NFC payments quickly.
The payment service currently supports Savings cards from Guangfa Bank, Minsheng Bank, and SPDB. Credit cards from Guangfa Bank and SPDB are also supported. While OnePlus Pay only works with OnePlus 7T phones currently, the company’s older flagship phones are expected to gain support for the NFC-based mobile payment service sometime in the coming weeks.
Currently, global giants like Google, Samsung, and Apple have already ventured into this business with Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay. Likely, OnePlus Pay will be available in the pre-installed Wallet app as per reports from GizChina and can also be triggered by double-pressing the power button and the company claims the code scanner is the fastest in the market as opposed to its rivals like Alipay or WeChat.
As far as availability is concerned, the future of the new venture is still unknown. Whether OnePlus pay will make it out of china or no, probably depends on how it’s received in Chinese markets. If it fares well enough, they might intend to launch it in other booming markets such as the US and India but the timeline is still unknown as OnePlus did not announce anything more. From what it looks like, they might even roll it out with the next OnePlus 8 series of smartphones.
