December 12th, 12/12, or Double 12, was Alibaba's sequel to the highly successful Singles Day (November 11th). The difference this time though was the incredible focus on and success of the online-to-offline commerce push.

The new version of the popular Chinese payment app Alipay now supports Apple’s fingerprint touch sensor for account access and payment authorisation instead of a password.

Alipay is making headway on its promises to expand globally and has now entered into an agreement with several foreign transportation card firms, which will allow Alipay users to buy transport service cards through the Alipay app as they travel abroad.

This is part two of a two part series looking at China Unionpay's launch of Android Pay. Part one examined the potential impact of Android Pay on the mobile payment industry. Today we take a look at China Unionpay's business strategy in the mobile payments space as it launches Android Pay. We also answer the question of why China UnionPay would even be interested in having their own mobile payments app in the first place.