Now it’s the turn of Xiaomi India to get into the digital payments space. Having established itself as the top mobile phone seller in the country, Xiaomi has now launched Mi Pay. This will compete directly with incumbents such as Paytm and Google Pay. The Mi Pay app will be available on Xiaomi devices that run on the Android based MIUI. Xiaomi India has informed that this Mi Pay app is seamlessly integrated across SMS, contacts, scanner, app vault and settings within the MIUI environment their devices operate in.

Xiaomi has tied up with ICICI Bank for the role of the payment service provider while the NPCI monitored Unified Payments of India (UPI) will be the digital wallet interface. Xiaomi says  it has received the approvals from the National Payments Corporation of India.

Giving out the numbers the company says people holding accounts in 120 banks can do transactions using Mi Pay and they have enabled payments to utilities like electricity bills, water tax etc. There are over 100 billers whose payments could be settled through Mi Pay.

Interestingly, Xiaomi confirms that it has made arrangements for all the data pertaining to the transactions via Mi Pay in India to be stored in servers within the country. This has been a major bone of contention with the government standing firm on this requirement and many players like Amazon Pay and WhatsApp Pay have had to delay their digital wallets projects in India to comply with this stipulation.

"We have introduced our innovative Mi Pay service for our consumers in India. This is the ultimate solution to a variety of consumer payment needs, and hence empowers millions of Xiaomi users with access to digital payments," said Muralikrishnan B, Chief Operating Officer, Xiaomi India.

Xiaomi has also assured that the data will be stored in encrypted form and will be secure.

(With IANS inputs)