China's mobile payment industry is generating over $9 trillion a year, and Alipay is the market leader.

The second-highest selling phone in the nation in 2017 was the iPhone7, so Apple won a Chinese silver medal last year. However, in 2018 the electronics giant will target gold.

Something that is not typical to Apple is the move to team up with Ant Financial, a known affiliate of Alibaba, to allow for customers to buy products in-store and online using Alipay, a payment system that competes with Apple Pay. To solve competitivity, the Alipay app will have a dedicated section for App Store purchases.

China is a huge market for Apple, with over $9 billion in sales in the fourth quarter of 2017 alone. However, the biggest score for Apple in China came in the second quarter of 2015 in which the company generated $16.8 billion. During this interval, China's mobile payments transactions hit $9 trillion in 2016, with Alipay accounting for around 61.5 percent of those sales, an iResearch report said.

Apple has made an effort to win the Chinese government with a lot of moves, including opening up two data centers in the country, as well as investing in local companies, such as the billion-dollar investment in the primary rival to Uber in China, Didi Chuxing.