Third-party payment rapid expansion elimination is inevitable

"In 2012, the scale of remittance transactions in the world has exceeded 600 billion yuan. The company strives to bid farewell to the '100 billion era' in the near future and the annual transaction volume will exceed the trillion-dollar scale." The third-party payment company remittance president Zhou Hao recently said.

From the experts' point of view, the emerging payment is sprinting against the traditional payment. “Small shrimps have to challenge big whale”. At the same time, for the fast-growing third-party payment companies, the homogenization competition is currently serious, and the industry is deeply stuck in the "quagmire" of price wars. It is expected that the "elimination game" will be unavoidable in the next two to three years.

The payment industry is at the meeting point of tradition and innovation

From the platform of financial service model to the endless application of mobile, the development and change of information technology has subverted the entire financial information service industry, and has brought about continuous innovation, more and more dynamic financial payment model.

In recent years, third-party payment companies have stepped up the pace of “snapping in circles”. According to Zhou Hao, Remittance paid off in 2012 and consolidated its services in the fields of aviation, funds, etc., and quickly entered the POS acquiring business. It truly penetrated into the “hedge” of traditional financial services and completed the work in all capital cities across the country. layout.

Third-party payment is usually divided into three major areas: Internet payment, offline collection, and prepaid cards. According to forecasts by research institutions, the transaction volume of third-party internet payment market in China was approximately 3.9 trillion yuan in 2012, an increase of 79.4% over 2011; the total size of offline acceptance market transactions was approximately 21.7 trillion yuan, an increase of 42.9% year-on-year; The card issuance volume is expected to exceed the 2 trillion yuan mark.

Analyst Zhang Meng believes that the rapid development of third-party payment stems from many factors: First, the traditional enterprise's e-commerce process is accelerating, large-scale e-commerce platform large-scale promotion into normal; Second, insurance, funds, colleges, and cross The emerging subdivided application market, such as offshore payment, has been continuously explored. Third, payment companies have started to deploy multi-services. Fourth, banking financial institutions have joined the development and nurturing of the mobile payment market. In addition, payment methods such as mobile phone card readers and two-dimensional code payment have started to emerge.

“The payment industry is at a meeting point between tradition and innovation. The Chinese market can provide enough nutrients to support such a huge payment system.” Chen Qizhang, president of global payment giant FDC Greater China, recently held the first Shanghai Financial Information Service. The industry forum stated that the business model of traditional payment companies is the same as the construction of expressways, and as long as there are cars, they can charge. However, in the new third-party payment model, the car may not be driving on the original highway, and then the traditional payment method may be abandoned.

The Central Bank has issued a total of 223 payment licenses

Not long ago, the People's Bank of China issued a total of 26 new "non-financial institutions" "Payment Licenses". This is also the sixth batch of third-party payment licenses issued by the Central Bank. At this point, the central bank has issued a total of 223 payment agency licenses.

Since the central bank issued the first batch of 27 payment licenses in May 2011, the six batches of licences issued so far by the Central Bank have their own characteristics. The first batch was mainly engaged in the nationwide payment business; the second batch was mainly engaged in local business, and the number of companies receiving pre-paid card issuance and acceptance services accounted for more; the third batch of highlights was that the three major telecom operators were paid licenses. The fourth batch of new digital television payment services; the fifth batch of only one company, Qingdao Baidatong; the sixth batch of pre-paid card issuance and acceptance.

Qian Baobao’s director Sun Jiangtao told reporters that from the perspective of central bank licensing, as long as the relevant hardware conditions are met, the central bank will allow and support them. In the future, more companies will join the payment industry. “Because of the strengthening of supervision over third-party payment agencies, the performance of the market has become more standardized in the past two years and the industry has become increasingly ethical.”

With the issuance of six batches of payment licenses, licensees are no longer scarce resources for third-party payment companies. In Zhou Yi’s view, the future of pre-paid cards will be more personalized and more localized. There will still be many such companies in the future. However, the nationwide online payment and offline collection will not be too many in the future, because the survival of such companies mainly depends on the scale of the transaction. Some small-scale enterprises do not have a competitive advantage.

"Knockouts" will be inevitable
Wang Huafeng, chief architect of remittance to the world, believes that after years of development, many third-party payment companies have accumulated data on shopping, payment, and other data for small and medium sized merchants and consumers, accompanied by XTP (things), mobile technology, big data, and cloud. With the rise of computing and other IT technologies, the future of financial information services is expected to usher in a disruptive technological revolution and business model innovation.

However, it should not be overlooked that due to the current homogenization of domestic third-party payment companies' products, the price war has intensified, resulting in the continuous shrinking of the profits of the entire industry, and the profitability is not optimistic.

“The whole industry is developing at a high speed, but not all companies have the ability to grasp the scale of transactions, have the ability to innovate and market development.” Zhou Wei said that the payment business needs the support of the customer base, new technology breakthroughs, and can walk in the industry. The front is definitely a company with strong comprehensive ability. From a payment perspective, even a company with a turnover of 100 billion yuan a year may not reach the basic size required by the payment companies in the future.

Sun Jiangtao stated that there is no advantage in the license itself, but the business advantage of the first entrant still exists. Afterwards, the main energy of the enterprise should still be placed on product innovation and market development. In addition, in the past year, payment companies have been making frequent acquisitions and financings, and it is expected that the frequency of mergers and acquisitions in the payment industry will increase in the future.

Zhuo Dongwei, deputy general manager of E-SUN Payments predicts that in the next two to three years, third-party payment will usher in a period of reshuffle, and one-third of companies in the industry with poor operating conditions will withdraw or be merged.