Xiaomi officially announced that the tech giant would soon launch NFC-enabled watch straps in India. Xiaomi India’s Chief Business Officer Raghu Reddy, took to Twitter to announce the same.
The aforementioned NFC straps will work on the Mi Pay app.
This announcement was made at the Global FinTech Festival, which started on September 28, 2021. At the event, Xiaomi announced the straps to which, as the tweet mentions, RuPay, RBL, and the FinTech platform Zeta will contribute. This will be the first instance of such payment straps that will get launched in India. As is the case with any payment service that get launched or introduced for the first time, its payment services will be limited initially. However, that also means that Xiaomi will gradually expand the payment services to include a wider range of banks and users.
Rajesh Bansal, the CEO of the RBI Innovation Hub, mentioned at the event that as of 2021, UPI payments in India stand somewhere around Rs. 2.3 lakh crore, and that by 2025 it could reach up to Rs. 6.2 lakh crore. The numbers also point to the scope of massive growth that might take place within just four years. Bansal went on to mention that the launch of Xiaomi’s NFC straps may also result in more people opting for cashless online payments in the future.
Although Xiaomi announced the NFC Straps, the company has not mentioned any date of its launch or its pricing. Moreover, it is not yet clear which watches will be compatible with these straps.
