Payment network China UnionPay and China-based handset maker ZTE have disclosed an agreement to enable contactless payment on embedded chips in two of ZTE’s latest high-end Android phones.

The deal is yet another wrinkle in China’s potentially huge NFC- payments market, with Chinese telcos planning to issue millions of low-cost NFC SIMs to store bank and transit applications, and big Internet payments players Alipay and possibly Tencent Holdings getting involved in NFC transit ticketing, as well. 

China UnionPay, the country’s payment network monopoly, which dominates China’s bank card market, had experimented with embedded chips in the past, including projects on embedded chips in two NFC-enabled models in 2012 from HTC and one from Samsung last year.