UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay, has partnered with telecoms company Huawei Technologies to launch mobile payment service Huawei Pay across global markets, beginning with Russia. The move is an expansion of the partnership the companies inked in 2016, when Huawei Pay was first launched.
The two will bring the mobile service first to Russia where UnionPay currently has 40,000 POS terminals capable of accepting its “Quickpass” payments (including Huawei Pay), before moving to other markets along its “Belt and Road Initiative.” As well as the availability of POS terminals, there have been about 1.3 million UnionPay cards issued by Russian banks.