Apple Pay has proved hugely popular on the first day of its availability in China, with 10 million people having linked their payment cards to the mobile payment service within an hour of it going live.
This figure is taken from a report from Beijing Morning News and reiterated by Mashable, which notes that Apple Pay launched in China at 5am yesterday. Mashable also cites local reports that, by 5pm, 38 million cards had been linked with Apple Pay. The service is best known for enabling safer payments at bricks and mortar retail stores through iPhone models released in 2014 and 2015.
Especially impressive is that, in just its first day in China, Apple Pay has already picked up nearly a tenth as many users as Alipay, the leader of the East Asian country’s mobile payments market. The ability to use Apple Pay within apps on many Touch ID-equipped iPhones and iPads could also prove surprisingly instrumental to Apple’s future success in China; we hint at why in the new issue of AppleMagazine.