NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

China is a great market for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) . In fiscal Q1 2015, the company reported $16.1 billion in revenue from the greater China region (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan), up 70% year over year.

And Apple’s dominance in the country is inarguable, with Apple narrowly missing the No. 1 smartphone vendor spot in China in calendar Q4, losing out to the China native Xiaomi.

But for Apple Pay, the company’s new mobile payment system, things have not been quite as good.

Apple’s been courting banks in China since last year, trying to get them on board with the company’s new payment system, but so far most of that work has proved fruitless.

UnionPay — the only bank allowed to make interbank bank payments in China — has yet to sign up for Apple Pay, and talks with eight other banks have gone nowhere as well.

In a country that’s eager for Apple products this is especially troubling.