Personally, I am pretty cool about the products Xiaomi and do not share the enthusiasm of its fans, but even I sincerely admire the Mi Band line of fitness bracelets. After all, the Chinese did not just manage to create the most popular tracker for sports, they opened this market to millions of users around the world, setting the price on the Mi Band at an incredibly low price at that time. Where else could you buy a bracelet for a thousand rubles? Perhaps nowhere. Well, when Xiaomi began to equip them with NFC modules for contactless payment, there was no longer any doubt that she could conquer the entire market for herself. But the Chinese themselves, for some reason, did not think about it at all.
Finally, Xiaomi decided to bring Mi band with NFC to Russia
Despite the fact that Xiaomi does not officially sell Mi Band with NFC support in Russia, apparently, the company decided to replay everything. Therefore, the Russian office Xiaomi launched the Mi Band 4 testing program with a built-in near-field module. To do this, several dozen test gadgets were officially brought into the country, which were distributed to 30 random users, giving them the opportunity to test an advanced version of the branded fitness bracelet, and at the same time try it out as a contactless payment tool.
How to pay with Mi Band
Contactless payment for Mi Band users will be available only through Mi Pay
Oddly enough, Xiaomi decided not to use Google Pay as a payment service, opting for the proprietary Mi Pay service. It cannot yet boast of broad support from banking organizations, but at this stage it will slightly ease Xiaomi the task, since it will greatly limit the influx of those wishing to test the new product. After all, only residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who are Raiffeisenbank MasterCard holders, were allowed to test the Mi Band 4.
Xiaomi launched Mi Pay in Russia last summer, but the service did not become widespread due to the popularity of alternative solutions that have been on the market for a long time and have captured a tangible audience of users. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that this is why the Chinese decided on Russian sales of bracelets with NFC, because, unlike expensive smart watches, almost everyone can afford them. In the end, users don't care what the name of the service they use to pay for their purchases. The main thing is to have such an opportunity in principle.
How to pay with Mi Pay
It is noteworthy that Xiaomi is testing Mi Band 4 with NFC paired with smartphones both based on Android and based on iOS. This means that the Chinese want even the owners iPhone to pay for purchases in a contactless way through Mi Pay. But how exactly they want to achieve this is difficult to say. Still, Apple does not accept third-party payment services on its devices and is unlikely to make an exception for Xiaomi. On the other hand, perhaps this is a kind of swing for the future, since this summer Apple will be obliged to provide access to NFC in their iPhone for the Mir Pay payment system, and if this happens , the right to claim a similar privilege will be given to Xiaomi.
Testing will run from February 27 to March 13. During this time Xiaomi wants to experience how convenient, efficient and hassle-free contactless payment via Mi Pay is. True, when exactly the company will start selling compatible bracelets in the domestic market, it is not reported officially. Moreover, there is no information in the public field that the Chinese are generally going to start selling the advanced version of the Mi Band with us. After all, who knows how the testing will end.