OnePlus launching payment app 'OnePlus Pay' in India by early next year

After establishing a pole position in the premium smartphone segment in India, the Chinese smartphone maker has launched smart TVs to take on arch-rival, Xiaomi.

While OnePlus new phone OnePlus 7T and smart TV have been able to create hype before the festive season, the Oppo-owned company is planning to roll out wallet service for Indian users. 

The move will make it a wholesome competitor to Xiaomi and Samsung, which had already launched these three products - smartphone, TV and wallet.

During the announcement of the latest smartphone, OnePlus 7T, the company had unveiled two additional products - OnePlus Pay and OnePlus Cloud.

OnePlus Cloud will come as part of Oxygen OS 10, which debuts with the upcoming smartphone. On the other hand, OnePlus Pay will be its wallet.

Unlike speculations of competing with pure-play digital wallet and UPI-based payments service like MiPay, Google Pay and Paytm, OnePlus Pay may follow Samsung Pay, which uses a special MST chip to carry out contactless transaction directly from the phone (without cards).

It means OnePlus Pay likely to leverage NFC chip technology for payments.

According to OnePlus Global Head of Software Product Growth Szymon Kopec, the company will bring something that the Indian market has not seen so far in the online payment sector. 

However, there is no confirmation on the nature of payments service and exact timeline of launch. We can expect an early next year launch of OnePlus Pay.

The company has also announced to invest Rs 1,000 crore rupees in the next three years into Hyderabad R&D centre.

With the launch, OnePlus will join the list of offshore companies like Xiaomi, Samsung, WhatsApp (beta testing) to roll out digital payments service in India. iPhone maker Apple was also in talks with the Indian government to launch its payment service, but, it reportedly called off the plan.