China UnionPay (CUP), the country’s official card payments network, has issued notifications to its member banks to tell them “to avoid working with third-party payment services like Alipay”, Want China Times reports. Alipay now has a 50% market share in China, the report adds, while CUP has an 11.9% share. Apple, which today added CUP cards as a payment option to its App Store, has been reported to be in talks with China UnionPay and also with Alipay about partnering to bring Apple Pay to China.