“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay.

“We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

“China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.”

China UnionPay’s QuickPass and Apple Pay together will protect customer payment information through industry-leading payment tokenization technology. Security is at the core of Apple Pay, so when you add a credit or debit card, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers.

Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in a dedicated chip called the Secure Element on your device. Each transaction is also authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.