China has a population of about 1.4 billion and by 2020, 60% of its people will live in the cities2. To cater to the increased masses, the transport and payment systems are moving rapidly towards contactless form. For payment alone, China has about 4 million terminals accepting UnionPay’s QuickPass. The country also has the largest smartphone user base in the world3, offering huge potential for mobile contactless transactions. Now that the two biggest mobile operators have launched NFC transport services in Beijing, almost all of the city commuters can ride their metros using their smartphones.
The NFC SIM’s multi-tenant capacity enables hosting of BestPay, China Telecom’s mobile payment application, offering value-added services such as bill payment, ticketing, and financial products to its users.
„China Telecom has been Gemalto’s partner for a long time. Last year, we provided specially-designed NFC SIMs for their nationwide launch of NFC services,“ said Suzanne Tong-Li, President for Greater China and Korea at Gemalto. „With 4G FDD-LTE commercial license, they will be able to leverage the additional LTE feature of Gemalto’s SIMs to offer faster and enhanced NFC services to their customers, leading to a wider adoption of mobile contactless services across the country.“
1 Combined population of Shanghai and Beijing
2 http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-20/china-wants-its-people-in-the-cities
3 http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Worldwide-Smartphone-Usage-Grow-25-2014/1010920