Xiaomi partners with Sei to pre-install crypto wallets! Allowing stablecoins to buy electric vehicles by 2026

Sei blockchain core development team Sei Labs reaches a distribution agreement with Xiaomi, pre-installing crypto wallets and discovery apps on all Xiaomi smartphones sold outside China and the US. By mid-2026, Xiaomi retail and online channels will add stablecoin payment capabilities, allowing customers to purchase phones and electric vehicles using USDC, first launched in Hong Kong and the EU, then expanding to broader regions.

The scale effect of millions of pre-installed phones and market coverage

Xiaomi’s partnership with Sei is most impactful in terms of coverage scale. Xiaomi is the third-largest smartphone manufacturer globally, with an approximate shipment volume of 150 million units in 2024. Although this partnership excludes the Chinese and US markets, shipments in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa remain substantial. Market research data shows Xiaomi’s annual shipments in these regions are around 60 to 80 million units, meaning Sei Wallet will reach tens of millions of new users within the next year.

The power of this pre-installation strategy lies in frictionless conversion. Traditional crypto wallets require users to actively download, register, back up seed phrases, and complete multiple steps, each of which can lead to user drop-off. Pre-installed wallets come ready out of the box—users only need to log in with existing Google or Xiaomi IDs, without understanding private keys or seed phrases. This “plug and play” design dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for crypto adoption.

The market characteristics of Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa are also strategically significant. Europe has mature financial infrastructure but remains open to crypto innovation; Latin America faces currency devaluation and remittance needs; Southeast Asia is among the most active digital payment regions; Africa is experiencing rapid growth in mobile payment penetration. These four regions combined have over 3 billion people. If Xiaomi’s Sei Wallet can establish user habits in these markets, it will provide Sei with an unprecedented user base.

Sei Labs’ $5 million funding plan further strengthens its ecosystem expansion strategy. This fund will support projects integrating blockchain functionalities into consumer devices, enabling developers to receive financial backing to create dApps optimized for Xiaomi devices. This “hardware + software + ecosystem incentives” integrated approach is a key weapon for Sei in challenging established public chains like Solana.

Stablecoin payments in 2026: from crypto to the last mile of consumer transactions

(Source: Xiaomi official website)

The most revolutionary aspect of Xiaomi’s partnership with Sei is the plan to introduce stablecoin payment options across Xiaomi’s retail and online channels by mid-2026, allowing customers to buy devices including smartphones and electric vehicles using assets like USDC. This initiative will first launch in Hong Kong and the EU, then expand to more regions.

This scenario transforms stablecoins from speculative tools into practical payment methods. When consumers can directly buy Xiaomi phones or electric vehicles with USDC, the utility of stablecoins is most directly demonstrated. For crypto holders, this eliminates the intermediate steps of “crypto → fiat → purchase,” saving time and transaction fees. For Xiaomi, accepting stablecoin payments can reduce cross-border FX costs and settlement delays.

The initial launch in Hong Kong and the EU is highly strategic. Hong Kong is a crypto hub in Asia with clear regulations and an open stance toward stablecoins. The EU’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation provides a clear compliance pathway for stablecoins. Piloting in these mature regulatory markets allows Xiaomi to gather experience and establish compliance templates before expanding to other regions.

Three major technological innovations of Xiaomi Sei Wallet

Multi-party computation (MPC) wallets: Distributed private key storage with no single point of failure, offering far greater security than traditional hot wallets

Social account login: Users can open wallets without understanding seed phrases, simply using Google or Xiaomi IDs to lower the barrier

Native integrated payments: Directly purchase products with USDC in Xiaomi retail channels, eliminating exchange friction

Launched in 2023, Sei is a high-speed Layer-1 blockchain built specifically for low-cost transactions. Its core advantages are transaction speed and cost, theoretically achieving confirmation times in the sub-second range and extremely low fees. These performance features make it highly suitable for retail payment scenarios, where consumers cannot wait minutes for blockchain confirmation at checkout.

Xiaomi is a global electronics company producing smartphones, smart home devices, IoT hardware, and electric vehicles. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Beijing, Xiaomi’s product range spans from entry-level phones costing hundreds of dollars to flagship devices, and from smart home to electric vehicle ecosystems. This diversified product matrix provides rich application scenarios for the Sei Wallet, not just as a payment tool but also potentially as the value transfer layer within Xiaomi’s IoT ecosystem.

The showdown with Solana Mobile: who will win the mobile crypto war?

Sei Labs is not the first Web3 project targeting smartphones. Solana Labs’ subsidiary Solana Mobile announced the first Saga smartphone in June 2022, starting shipments the following year. By late 2023, due to BONK token airdrops tied to each phone, the token’s value temporarily exceeded the retail price, and sales surged accordingly.

In August 2024, after receiving over 150,000 preorders, Solana began shipping the second-generation Seeker phones to users in more than 50 countries. These devices feature extensive hardware upgrades, built-in crypto wallets, decentralized app stores, and an updated seed vault system. On December 3, Solana Mobile announced plans to launch a native token SKR in early 2026 related to its Seeker phones and broader mobile ecosystem.

However, Solana Mobile’s approach relies on “proprietary hardware,” requiring convincing users to abandon familiar brands and purchase Solana-exclusive phones. In contrast, Xiaomi’s Sei partnership adopts a “piggybacking” strategy, leveraging Xiaomi’s existing large shipment volume and brand recognition, without needing to educate users on new brands. This path offers a natural advantage in user conversion efficiency.

Recently, Samsung partnered with Coinbase to expand crypto features on its phones. In October, they started allowing approximately 75 million US Galaxy users to buy cryptocurrencies directly within Samsung Wallet, with plans to expand to other markets. However, Samsung’s approach integrates with Coinbase’s existing platform rather than promoting a proprietary blockchain, which differs from Xiaomi’s deep integration with Sei.

Xiaomi’s Sei model demonstrates greater ecosystem ambition. When tens of millions of phones come pre-installed with Sei Wallet, developers are incentivized to build dApps for Sei to reach these users, creating a positive feedback loop. This hardware-led ecosystem building approach may be more effective than pure software promotion.