The Xiaomi Mi 5 has been the subject of many leaks and rumors, and now, the upcoming flagship of the Beijing-based smartphone maker is reportedly going to have NFC support.

Back in August 2014, Xiaomi opted to exclude NFC from the Xiaomi Mi 4, where CEO Lei Jun said that only 1 percent of the Mi3 and Mi2A owners use the feature. On that note, some say that NFC is useful, whereas some argue that it's not required.

With that said, Xiaomi apparently sided with the former group, deciding that NFC will be included in the Mi 5. As evidence of the development, China UnionPay released a document that listed 32 handsets that will support its NFC-enabled mobile payment called "Cloud Lightening Pay," which is a rough translation of the name.

The organization launched NFC payment systems lately, allowing users with certain smartphones to make payments using the communication technology similar to how Samsung Pay and Apple Pay works. The Xiaomi Mi 5 made it to the list, confirming the feature to be packed in the flagship.

As for the performance of the handset, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 is reportedly going to power it. Initially, it was believed that it'll sport a 5.2-inch display and an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, but recently surfaced leaks suggest that it will have a slightly smaller 5-inch screen and a traditional fingerprint scanner instead along with a physical home button.

Also, there's a chance that the handset will have a USB Type-C interface, 4 GB worth of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage under its hood. Out of the box, it's said that it'll run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow based on Xiaomi's MIUI OS.

This change could mean that Xiaomi might just be preparing for the future of payments, as mobile wallets have been emerging here and there.

As usual, without an official word from the company itself, it would be best to take the news with the proverbial grain of salt.