To capitalize on growing mobile payments and to keep more business in-house, smartphone maker Xiaomi has established a payment company.
The company has registered capital of CNY50 million and Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, is the legal representative and chairman of this company. The operating scope of Xiaomi's payment company includes electronic payment technology, payment and settlement technology, as well as technology development, transfers, consulting and services related to settlement systems.
For this newly established payment company, it is still yet to be decided if they will apply for their own third-party payment license or purchase one to rapidly enter the Chinese payment market.
Lei predicted to local media that Xiaomi would achieve sales of over CNY100 billion between 2015 and 2016. However, in the payment sector, the company can only depend on other channels such as Alipay, Tenpay, and online banking partners. So this newly-formed company will allow Xiaomi to not need to rely on outside payment vendors.
Xiaomi previously created its own virtual currency which allows users to buy various virtual products and value-added services on the MIUI platform.