China’s e-wallet mobile market is booming. It’s been growing at 253.69% a year.

Wherever there Apple there is Samsung, and vice versa. Apple expects China to be its biggest mobile payment market, so it’s not surprising that its biggest competitor also wants a slice in that market.

Having publicly beta tested it for a month, Samsung has now officially launched its Samsung Pay service in China having partnered with the same bank that helped launch Apple Pay in China. Currently a total of 10 debit and credit cards per customer, can be associated with a Samsung smartphone.

Participating banks for Samsung Pay includes banking giants such as China Construction Bank, ICBC, China Merchants Banks, and others. Major banks such as Bank of China and Bank Of Communications will soon follow suit.

Currently only Samsung smartphones featuring fingerprint readers, such as Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7, and Galaxy S7 Edge support Samsung Pay. Samsung has however hinted at the possibility of adding more fingerprint reader enabled smartphones to the list later.

Rooted devices will not support Samsung Pay.

Samsung’s foray into the well-established Chinese mobile wallet market is fraught with challenges. Alipay and WeChat are strong local contenders which cover online shopping, taxi services and even collaborate during the Chinese New Year.

Given the fact that in the third quarter of 2015, China had a whopping 4.54 billion mobile payments transactions, involving a staggering 18.17 yuan, equivalent to $2.8 trillion.

No wonder Apple and Samsung are so gun ho about the Chinese mobile payment e-wallet market. Given the Chinese government’s hostility towards Google, it’s unlikely that Android Pay will even be a contender in China.