Apple and China UnionPay have announced a partnership to bring the digital wallet "Apple Pay" to China cashing in on the growing popularity of such services in the country.

Apple said it considers China to be an extremely important market. In a deal with UnionPay and 15 of China's leading banks, Apple users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.

And Samsung has also announced a similar partnership with China UnionPay. The two smartphone competitors will go head-to-head, trying to encourage users to add credit or debit cards to their respective mobile-payments services.

Both companies say their services will launch in China as soon as early 2016 after the testing and certification required by regulators is completed. As for now, China's mobile payment market is dominated by Alipay, which had a 77% market share in the first quarter of 2015, and Tencent’s WeChat Payments, which held 14%.