China Merchants Bank Co Ltd, or CMB, and the Taiwanese cell phone manufacturer HTC Corp together released the mobile-payment product called "CMB wallet", which will allow consumers to spend money by placing their phones near a device known as a point-of-sale machine.

The "wallet" can be used to make payments in small sums, and CMB is planning to make it capable of processing large payments - those involving as much as 50,000 yuan ($7,900), for example - next year, said Liu Jianjun, director of the bank's retail finance headquarters.

The central bank is expected to publish new mobile payment standards for financial institutions at the end of December, and the "CMB wallet" will be the first product to meet the new standard, said Hu Tao, deputy general manager of retail banking at CMB, which is helping to draft the rules.

Chinese lenders have been looking at the mobile payment market as a possible additional source of revenue in recent years, a time when they have been required to hold more capital and have seen interest rate spreads narrow.

The agreement between CMB and HTC over the "wallet" project is not an exclusive one, and both companies are in negotiations with other lenders or handset manufacturers such as Samsung Group and Apple Inc, said Liu Jianjun, adding that CMB is also in talks with mobile carriers to incorporate the "wallet" function directly into SIM cards.

"We haven't found that we can sell more of these devices than our rivals simply by saying we have near-field communication technology," said Ray Yam, president of HTC China. "Only by taking steps early on can we seize more of these opportunities."

沪江英语快讯：招行联手HTC手机厂商在市场上畅销的3款HTC手机上预装招行“手机钱包”，购买这种手机的招行客户只需去银行柜台激活一下，即可使用小额非接触式支付功能，在银联“闪付”POS机上完成支付。这是行长马蔚华近期多次提出消灭“信用卡”观点后，招行正式推出的移动支付手段。目前，随着移动互联网爆炸式发展，搭此顺风车的移动金融开始加速。不过，受制于“闪付”POS机受理环境及手机和银行卡兼容性影响，“手机钱包”的应用目前仍处于尝试阶段。