Paying for the rivers and lakes: Alipay, Bank, UnionPay

Summary: Alipay is charged. "Free" was originally a weapon of the gods when Alipay and the Bank and UnionPay fought. Nowadays, the “grassroots-born” Alipay puts down its own unique skills, and the “famous” bank runs counter to Alipay and begins to introduce various free policies.

Alipay is charged.

"Free" was originally a weapon of the gods when Alipay and the Bank and UnionPay fought.

Nowadays, the “grassroots-born” Alipay puts down its own unique skills, and the “famous” bank runs counter to Alipay and begins to introduce various free policies.

Whether to hold the free banner is only a microcosm of competition between the two sides.

In the past 13 years, there have been too many palace fights between Alipay, UnionPay and banks.

From sorrow to sorrow, to the sword. All the entanglements arise from the interests and ends with the interests.

Paying this river and lake has never been calm.

1, rivers and lakes rookie

In 2003, one afternoon in the autumn of October, three employees of the Taobao Finance Department stared nervously at the computer screen and checked the accounts against an Excel account statement.

On this day, Alipay officially went online.

The company is quite simple, with only three computers and one fax machine. These three employees are also temporarily deployed from the operations department.

In the first month, Alipay successfully traded more than 30 pens, about 10,000 yuan.

No one thought that this need to manually check the Excel spreadsheet, it would be like a "snake", collect data a little bit, and eventually grow into a huge database.

And they did not expect that in just two decades, in the double eleven carnival set up by Taobao, Alipay's daily trading volume will reach 91.217 billion yuan.

At this time, Alipay, initially involved in the rivers and lakes, in addition to the traditional payment function, also served as a "trust intermediary" in e-commerce transactions.

The bank at this time is facing a profound change.

Take ICBC as an example. On the one hand, it is transforming into a commercial bank. On the one hand, it is promoting the online banking business and anxiously looking for online customers.

Therefore, when the Alipay team visited the West Lake Sub-branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Hangzhou Branch, although the bank was dubious about the future of Alipay, Taobao behind Alipay is a quality customer who can actually bring cash flow.

The interests complemented each other, the cooperation was quickly reached, and even in order to cooperate smoothly with Alipay, ICBC also upgraded the system.

Banks and Alipay "just hit it off."

When the two are in love, an uninvited guest breaks in - UnionPay.

At the moment, what UnionLink is doing is "the universal use of bank cards", which essentially conflicts with Alipay's business.

Therefore, as soon as Alipay appeared, it was somewhat arrogant with UnionPay.

2, "The world martial arts will not break fast"

One day in 2004, Ma Yun took the initiative to find UnionPay.

Ma Yun’s idea at the time was that as long as he passed the UnionPay, he could open up all the banking channels and save the effort of negotiating them.

However, the exchange lasted for half an hour, and the two sides said that they would "renew".

Is UnionPay arrogant? No.

The fact is that the UnionPay of the year was born and tender, although the first generation of bank card interbank transaction clearing system was quickly established, but it was only available online, and online, and did not achieve linkage with banks.

This means that for technical reasons, the cooperation between the two sides has failed.

According to reports, after a month or two, the then China UnionPay executives took the initiative to ask the person in charge of ChinaPay, the latter replied: "Ma Yun seems to have to do it himself."

Alipay can't wait. The shortcut failed to explore, Ma Yun led the team, a bank to go.

That is, this year, Alipay split from Taobao, owned its own independent website, operating company, and then began its own online payment field.

Ma Yun said that in 2005, it was the year of safe payment for e-commerce in China.

Since then, Alipay has been on the road to the bulls, running all the way.

In February of that year, Alipay launched a full payment system, and then reached a strategic cooperation agreement with a number of banks and VISA to seek expansion outside Taobao.

In 2009, Alipay launched the “Integrated Living Resources” strategy to create a number of services such as water and electricity coal payment, credit card repayment, fines, tuition, administrative payment and online donation. The annual transaction volume was 287.1 billion yuan.

At the end of 2010, Alipay users exceeded 550 million. In addition to Taobao and Alibaba, external merchants have exceeded 460,000.

From an affiliate tool of Taobao, climbing to the dominance of online payment, Alipay took only eight years.

“The key to the success of Alipay is to capture the scene.” Xue Hongyan, director of the Internet Finance Research Center of Suning Financial Research Institute, believes that the key to making payments online is to expand the scene.

Alipay has been looking for any scene that can take root quickly and astutely, thus capturing the opportunity of the rise of Internet payments.

However, while paying for the scene on the harvest line, Ma Yun also has concerns: Alipay is actually moving in the gray field, and the shackles of illegal fund-raising are not scattered.

This panic spread in the field of third-party payments, the greater the volume, the heavier the panic.

Alipay had a backlog of more than 10 billion in 2010.

Ma Yun once said to the outside world, "Alibaba can make me sleep, Taobao can also make me sleep, Alipay makes me sleepless all day, because I may go to jail at any time."

Fortunately, the regulatory layer has a supportive attitude towards third-party payments. In May 2011, the first batch of licenses was issued, and Alipay was listed among them.

Alipay’s concerns were lifted, and some people began to be nervous.

UnionPay, silently watching Alipay born, rising, and self-contained.

Xue Hongyan introduced that after docking a number of banks, Alipay "is like a cashier at the mall, and the pos machine can support bank cards of all banks."

This is actually very similar to the role of UnionPay.

Alipay and the bank's cooperation with you, in fact, is bypassing UnionPay, and it is the best way to divide the UnionPay income.

In 2011, UnionPay just established an online cardless transaction processing platform; however, Alipay has obtained a license and is riding a dust.

Slow UnionPay, online, for the fast, wolf Alipay, no fuss.

3, masters

In the Alipay harvest online scene, UnionPay is in the market of hard-working development.

According to the data, as of 2012, UnionPay has set up 360,000 “UnionPay payment points” in more than 300 cities across the country.

At the same time, Alipay, who has been dancing on the Internet, is still trying to look down the line – the base camp of UnionPay.

The two masters are in a match, and the whole payment market is tight.

In 2012, it was the first time to talk about swords.

With the cash on delivery as the entry point, Alipay launched an offline logistics POS payment solution.

Similar to the online mode: Alipay is directly connected to the bank and bypasses UnionPay.

But after only one year, Alipay announced the POS machine business with a sly "for reasons that are well known."

Later, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily, Shanghai Bank received a fine of 20-30 million yuan from UnionPay for lending it to Alipay.

Although the Shanghai Bank did not actually pay the fine, UnionPay did not respond positively. But what is certain is that the UnionPay side has reacted fiercely to the move of Alipay to pay for the offline payment.

Alipay is temporarily dying.

Since 2014, it is the second time on the sword.

The POS machine was banned, and third-party payment such as Alipay introduced a QR code scanning code payment method.

This year, it was hailed as the first year of Alipay's force scanning code payment. Even if it was stopped by the central bank because of the "security risk" problem, it was still moving intermittently.

In order to pay a convenient user experience against the scanning code, UnionPay also launched its own “Cloud Flash Pay”, which promotes a convenient and fast payment experience.

In July this year, the central bank changed its attitude toward payment in two-dimensional code. With policy support, Alipay is even more powerful, launching various preferential policies and launching offline scenarios.

In this round of confrontation, Alipay has a large and sticky user, while UnionPay has a strong POS channel advantage, and it is not known who the deer will die.

4, siege Guangmingding

At the time when UnionPay and third-party payment battles are taking place, banks have been on the sidelines.

Xue Hongyan said, "If you don't consider the balance transfer, all the payments are from one bank card to another. Whether it is a third-party payment or a UnionPay, it is inseparable from the bank."

Bank deposit and loan three kinds of business, Alipay seems to conflict with "sink". But in fact, the bank's main business is deposit and loan, accounting for about 80%.

This means that the bank is "eating spreads": 3% to collect money, 6% to 10% to lend. Therefore, their most concern is how to get enough cash to find quality loan customers.

In the beginning, Alipay as a tool can bring cash flow to banks, and banks are also willing to cooperate with Alipay.

However, as the amount of Alipay is getting bigger and bigger, the status in negotiating with banks is getting stronger and stronger.

Banks and Alipay are growing apart.

Moreover, the bank found that third-party payment platforms such as Alipay acquired the most critical user data and gradually became a true “credit system”.

With data, around Alipay, Alipay has built the entire financial ecosystem: financial management, lending, and consumption.

The banks that have been watching the UnionPay and Alipay with their melon seeds have finally been wrapped up in the war.

In 2013, it was the first year of China's Internet finance, and the balance was born.

This money fund, which is operated by Alipay and Tianhong Fund, is very popular. A year later, the scale was nearly 600 billion, and the Internet financing trend was set off.

This strong wind has not only sent the unknown Tianhong Fund to the industry's first throne, but also made the bank feel bitter cold.

After Alipay, various "baby" products frequently appeared. With the subsequent P2P financing, the bank's most important cash flow was encroached.

Alipay has also changed from a payment instrument to a financial giant that indirectly covers the entire deposit and loan business.

"The barbarian standing at the door!" The bank described them as eager and angry.

ICBC, the first batch of banks to cooperate with Alipay, was also the first bank to lower the transfer limit of Alipay's fast payment in 2014, on the grounds of “protecting the safety of user funds”.

In the face of the sudden martyrdom of the bank, Ma Yun shouted, "This is the hardest and most glorious moment of Alipay."

But in addition to the quota, the bank seems to have no other way.

What makes the bank most uncomfortable is that Yu'ebao's money eventually exists on his own account, but he has to pay much higher interest than before.

The bank that was eating the spread was suddenly shackled.

In fact, the scale of 600 billion yuan cannot be compared with the overall scale of the bank.

What really makes the bank tremble is the Internet trend of the entire financial industry, and more worried that they can't keep up with this trend.

Xue Hongyan believes that third-party payments such as Alipay are like a squid that breaks into the traditional financial industry.

The innovation of third-party payment products has caused the loss of banking business, and also caused banks to reflect and pay attention to Internet finance business.

Banks that have been knocked out of the sap, start self-help: establish the network banking department, set up direct selling banks, mobile banking, build e-commerce platforms and so on.

The most conservative bank finally began to look up at the sky.

5, one side

The conflict between Alipay and banks and UnionPay is the conflict between Internet finance and traditional finance.

Internet finance squanders traditional financial rigidness, and traditional finance accuses Internet finance of advancing.

Interestingly, both parties are envious of each other's "regulatory environment."

Because of the lag of supervision, Internet finance is not only chaotic, but also constantly speculates on the possible dynamics of supervision and envy the traditional finance with clear policies; traditional finance believes that the rules and regulations frame itself and the “regulatory arbitrage” of Internet finance.

During the period of fierce confrontation, Alipay and Bank and UnionPay were somewhat excited.

After calming down, the two sides found that there is still a lot of cooperation in the field of payment.

First of all, the payment market is complex and large enough to be cooperatively developed.

Secondly, in some areas, Alipay and UnionPay, as well as even larger rivals - international Visa, MasterCard.

The wording of the two sides’ speeches has eased from “selling” to “cooperating” and “cooperating”.

Alipay has a 13-year battle with banks and UnionPay, and users don’t have much perception. Although it is wonderful behind, it is like a palace drama.

Fortunately, China’s payment pattern has just begun, and the separatist war has been suspended, and each family has hanged a stop card and smashed one side.

Of course, the fight for the big cake of this interest cake is far from the end.

Where there are benefits, there are rivers and lakes.