Apple Pay is finally planning to touch down on Chinese soil this Thursday. The word was recently spread by representatives of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. As per what has been told, the Apple customers in China will be able to access this service by February 18th, 2016.

As per the Apple Pay‘s Chinese Version website, there is a comment that states that the service will be coming soon however it still does not reflect the list of banks that are supporting this feature. The feature to make payments for various services and goods using the smart phones has been around for some time now. While Apple Pay was launched recently, we had Samsung Pay and Google’s Android Pay that was already in existence.

This service has already hit the Australian, Canadian, UK and US markets. For gaining more credibility and power, it is necessary that the expansion of the services needs to happen. Being one of the largest markets for smartphone’s in the world, the Chinese Market is one of the best choices the company could make for their expansion plans. However, to win the market over is also one of the biggest challenges that they would face.

Chinese consumers are already making payments from their phones as they buy various products from Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings. These companies are the online giants of the country. As per a study that was made towards the end of 2015, it was revealed that 358 million customers in China were using their smartphone’s to make payments for the goods that they bought. With such statistics in place, Apple will have to come up with a really good plan to convince the Chinese people to give Apple Pay a chance.

Apart from China, the service may also be hitting the French market sometime this year though the information is yet to be confirmed by the company.