EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: A senior ZTE executive told Mobile World Live the Chinese vendor will not follow rivals Apple and Samsung in offering a service that enables users to make NFC-based payments at the point-of-sale in locations such as restaurants and shops.

Quizzed recently at CES 2016 about whether the vendor would join the competition in differentiating its devices with a mobile payment service, Kan Yulun, CEO, EMEA and Latin America, ZTE Mobile Devices, responded: “We’re not doing a payment service by ourselves, we’re just providing the technology and the features. And we will support third parties so our customers can do this service.”

While presumably referencing support for NFC technology, the comments make clear that ZTE does not want to develop a service to rival the likes of  Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

In addition to these two services already in the market, LG has also said it is working on a payment service without commercial availability so far.

Roll-out of such services is time-consuming as it involves negotiating with multiple bank card issuers in each market prior to launching a commercial offering. Even Apple and Samsung have only launched in a handful of markets, so barriers to market entry are significant.

On the upside, mobile payments offers an opportunity for device vendors to introduce some additional stickiness into the relationship with customers, so reducing the amount of churn to rival vendors.

In addition, the interview covered the Chinese firm’s realistic ambitions in the device market and how its programme to work with end-users on new features is progressing. For the full video, see here.