Xiaomi’s upcoming mysterious flagship device continues to be at the centre of all speculations and controversies. The latest from the rumour mills suggest that the Xiaomi Mi5 might be shipped with the support for NFC, which the company dropped for its predecessor.

A leaked document by China UnionPay has listed 32 phones that would offer its mobile payment service in the near future. This list includes the Xiaomi Mi5 which according to the CEO of the company is “with waiting for.” This means the much speculated Mi5 will ship with NFC chip on board.

China UnionPay (CUP) is the solitary domestic payment gateway supplier and card organisation in the country. The newly released payment platform from CUP, which is translated as "Cloud Lightening Pay" will be supported by NFC authentication system. The technology would work much like Apple Pay and Android Pay that integrates the phone’s NFC chip.

Xiaomi dropped the idea of integrating NFC with Mi4 after the company realised that only a small percentage of Mi3 and Mi2A owners are actually using the feature, reports GizmoChina. But now with the growing popularity of digital payment platforms, thanks to the expansion of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, Xiaomi might have decided to bring NFC support for its upcoming flagship.

As for other features of the Xiaomi Mi 5, a physical Home Button with fingerprint sensor seems to be more likely than Qualcomm’s next-gen fingerprint scanning technology Snapdragon Sense ID. However, the smartphone will be powered by the latest Snapdragon 820 chipset paired with a massive 4GB of RAM. The flagship device is also rumoured to have a sibling dubbed as Mi5 Plus, as reported by GSM Arena.

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