After launching the Vivo NEX 3 5G smartphone in China, the company has now officially announced its own payments service in its home country, dubbed as Vivo Pay. The Vivo Pay is being launched in China in partnership with China Mobile Alliance.

As per the report, in the initial stage, Vivo Pay will be supported on seven smartphones from the company and the service is being supported by 18 banks and 17 million merchants across the country.

Shi Yujian, Senior Vice President of Vivo, revealed that the company has more than 250 million users, which could help the company smoothly transition into the financial business. Along with the Vivo Pay, the company has also announced Vivo Wallet service. China UnionPay is one of the first partner of Vivo for the finance business and in the future, the company is aiming to introduce more services and will have more partners on-board.

Vivo Pay comes with support for various payment methods, including mobile phone flash payment, card code integration, online payment and label payment. Along with 18 banks and 17 million merchants, Vivo mobile phone flash covers 17 cities and over 900 regional bus lines as well as 18 city bus cards.

Earlier, it was reported that Wang Lei, former President of Netease Finance could join the company to lead this new financial vertical of Vivo. It has now been confirmed that he has joined the company as a General Manager. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Zhejiang University and has experience with technical team management, payments services, consumer finance, wealth management, and blockchain.

With the launch of Vivo Pay, the company has joined the increasing list of smartphone manufacturers that have jumped into the financial market. The list of such companies include Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, and more recently Apple.

Up Next: Realme X2, a rebranded Realme XT with 64MP camera confirmed to launch in China on September 24

The post Vivo Pay payments service officially announced in China appeared first on Gizmochina.