Xiaomi’s Mi Pay app is still under development for India, though the beta version is available for MIUI.Xiaomi has now introduced Mi Pay, its digital payments platform, in India. The service’s presence was announced through a Mi Community post, which is still available in the beta version. With Mi Pay, Xiaomi will come up against Google Pay, launched in India as Tez, and Paytm, in the digital payments space.
From the Mi Community post, one can spot that the service is under development, as Mi Pay only caters to ICICI Bank and PayU. As the platform expands its services, users will be able to make digital transactions that have become commonplace. This includes net banking payments, payment via Credit/Debit cards, and UPI payments. This, of course, includes the QR scanning option, that can be provided by other Mi Pay users, or merchants.
Naturally, this will extend to DTH connection payments, water/electricity bill payments, mobile recharges and the like. Interestingly, one can find a timeline for the beta update, which could be ended just before the New Year. On the Mi Community post, a line at the bottom shows the text “Timeline: Today onwards to December 31 11.59pm (IST)”. This gives an indication that Xiaomi could announce the Mi Pay stable version on January 1, 2019.
For this, though, users will need to be running a Xiaomi phone with MIUI Global Beta ROM. The Mi Community post introducing the feature also consists of a link, that redirects users to a Google Form. Here, users can fill in basic information of their Xiaomi device, to receive an install link of the app onto their phone.
Like the China version of the app, Xiaomi plans to integrate the service into MIUI, so that users can eventually send payments through Contacts, the SMS app, as well as App Vault. The same would also be seen on compatible apps with scanning capabilities.
