Mi Pay beta hits India: Here's what you should know about Xiaomi's payment app

From Apple and Google to Fitbit and Samsung, it seems like every tech brand has a payment service of some kind. Xiaomi has its own payment app too, but it was a China-only affair at first.

Now, the company has announced that the Mi Pay app is available in India, quite possibly marking the first time Xiaomi’s payment app leaves its home country. The Chinese version of the app exclusively used NFC at launch, but this isn’t the case for the Indian variant.

The Indian version of Mi Pay supports payments via leading credit and debit cards, internet banking, and UPI. The latter means that QR payments are also supported, so you don’t need an NFC-enabled phone to make/receive payments.

The service is still in beta access, and you’ll need to be on a MIUI Global beta ROM in order to actually use it. Xiaomi adds that the feature will be available in the settings menu, contacts app, scanner utility, and SMS app.

It’s not the only mobile payment solution available in India though, as Tez (known as Google Pay in India) and PayTM are just two rivals in the market. WhatsApp has also been testing its payments solution in the country. Mi Pay will thus need to deliver in a big way if it hopes to become a contender. But with millions of Xiaomi phones in the country, it certainly has a good chance of finding an audience.

Want to get in on the action? Then you can sign up for the Mi Pay beta via the button below. The sign-up window ends on December 31 at 11:59PM IST.