According to the Marbridge Daily, China will soon announce a specification for its national mobile payment standard. The standard, which has already been drafted, could come as early as this year.

The news came out of last week's fifth annual China Mobile Payment Industry Summit in Beijing. According to the post from the Marbridge Daily, Chai Hongfeng, EVP of Chinese banking network China UnionPay, made the announcement.

The standard, administered by the China Electronics Standardization Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, will likely use the same frequency as other NFC technologies and will be compatible with other solutions such as SIM and SD card-based options.

A mobile payment standard for China will have a huge impact on the development of NFC, given the massive potential for that market. But for China to go with a technology incompatible with other solutions used worldwide would be unlikely. China UnionPay is the only domestic payment scheme in China and it has already been working with digital security provider Gemalto to roll out an NFC eco-system nationwide.

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