Xiaomi upgraded the China version of its Mi Pay mobile payment offer to accept a wider range of payment types, expanding the number of devices compatible with the service.

In a post on the its official Weibo channel, the company said the latest upgrade to Mi Pay would allow payments to be made on handsets lacking NFC for the first time. It named users of the Redmi Note 7, Redmi Note 5 and Redmi 6 as beneficiaries.

It will continue to offer NFC contactless as standard, but retail payments on the new system can also be processed through a QR code.

QR codes are already a popular mobile payment medium in China, with dominant brands from Ant Financial and Tencent already using the system for Alipay and WeChat Pay respectively.

Previously payments processed by Xiaomi were limited to devices with an NFC chip and retailers accepting payments compatible with UnionPay Cloud Flash Payment terminals.

Mi Pay was released on Xiaomi’s handsets in China during 2016 with the vendor launching a service with the same name, but different features, into India in May 2019.