Huawei has had a difficult year – from facing US sanctions down the barrel and promptly selling its Honor sub-brand – yet now the company has taken another step deeper into South Africa as Huawei Pay, the firm’s own payments system, will touch down on our shores this week.
Huawei Pay is set to launch on Thursday, December 3rd, in partnership with local payments service Zapper. Users will be able to leverage the service, available on Huawei smartphones, to add their bank cards and make payments through Zapper QR codes.
While an official list is not yet forthcoming, Huawei has offered that local debit and credit cards will be supported – while that likely includes all five major banks, it remains to be seen whether newcomers such as Discovery Bank or TymeBank will curry similar favour.
Huawei Pay won’t support tap-to-pay functionality at launch, and Huawei itself has confirmed that the service won’t store its users bank card numbers when handling transactions – nor share them with merchants. The firm has further clarified that it will not store transaction details.
Users can secure and authenticate their transactions via their fingerprint or passcode. Notably, users will be required to download the Huawei Pay app to make use of the service from AppGallery if it isn’t already installed on their devices.
The service will go toe-to-toe with Samsung Pay, which launched into the local market in 2018. Additionally, many local banks now offer tap-to-pay services and QR-powered payment services through their mobile apps. Other international contenders – such as Google Pay and Apple Pay – have yet to make landfall on our shores.
What are your thoughts? Would you be willing to use Huawei Pay in the future? Would the service give you an additional incentive to buy a Huawei smartphone? Let us know in the comments below.
