Original title: after Ma Yun went to the central bank, Alipay officially announced that it was "incorporated"!
The technology of the four seas network is coming to the end of the day, and the next third cities will be successfully connected to the Alipay. Today evening, the Internet Union and Alipay issued a notice respectively, announcing the signing of the cooperation agreement between the two sides, completing the docking, and carrying out the cooperation of the bar code payment business formally.
According to the announcement of China Unicom on March 31, the barcode payment service of wechat payment has been successfully connected. This means that the two domestic payment giants have been "incorporated" by Netcom and "cut off direct connection" has won 90%.
Actively embrace supervision
On April 28, according to media reports, at least two people close to the central bank confirmed that Ma Yun, chairman of Alibaba's board of directors, took Jing Xiandong, chairman of ant financial services, and Huang Hao, vice president of ant financial services and President of e-commerce bank, to the central bank headquarters to report and communicate with relevant leaders.
The communication content mainly includes the results of previous routine inspection and flight inspection, as well as the implementation progress of many regulatory provisions such as' disconnection of direct connection '.
In terms of time, this visit does not seem to be a coincidence. On December 27, 2017, the central bank issued the bar code payment business specification (for Trial Implementation), which stipulates that from April 1, 2018, when banks and Payment institutions carry out bar code payment business involving inter-bank transactions, they shall handle it through the inter-bank clearing system of the people's Bank of China or a legally qualified clearing institution.
However, according to the data released by China Netcom, the progress of "disconnection" seems not ideal. As of April 13, in gateway payment, 73.38% of commercial banks have no direct connection business, but the proportion of Payment institutions is only 4.35%, far from the target.
What is more urgent is that the end of "direct link disconnection" is coming. In August 2017, the central bank issued the notice on transferring the online payment business of non bank payment institutions from the direct connection mode to the Internet connection platform, which stipulates that from June 30, 2018, all online payment businesses involving bank accounts accepted by payment institutions will be processed through the Internet connection platform.
Today, Alipay announced its cooperation with the Internet Federation. It has been seen as actively embracing regulation and taking the initiative to coordinate the central bank's "direct and direct" regulatory work arrangement. After all, as a domestic third party pays' one brother ', as of the fourth quarter of 2017, Alipay's market share accounted for 53.73%, while the second place in the fortune paid market share accounted for 38.15%, two of the total 91.88%.
Alipay responsible person also said that this cooperation is only a transaction link, users and businesses using Alipay's payment experience will not be affected.
Third party payment competition environment changes, but the pattern is difficult to change
In the past direct connection mode, the third-party payment institutions mostly deal with banks at the branch level. Because the payment institutions' provisions can increase bank deposits, banks are willing to reduce the rate or even free some fees. With the lower fees of banks and the savings of UnionPay transfer clearing fees, the third-party payment institutions can make profits on the premise of low fees to special merchants, and everyone is happy.
Some data show that due to the detour of settlement by third-party institutions, the annual handling fee loss of UnionPay is about 3 billion yuan, which is obviously a big cake.
However, the independent liquidation of third-party institutions also means entering a regulatory vacuum, and the central bank is unable to grasp the detailed flow of funds, which provides opportunities for fraud, money laundering and other criminal acts. Therefore, it is imperative to "break the direct connection".
So, what kind of impact will this have on the payment market? There have been voices in the market that there may be business overlap between UnionPay and Netcom, and UnionPay does not intend to lay down this cake at present.
Analysts believe that UnionPay and Netcom have their own advantages. UnionPay has an equity relationship with the third-party payment institutions, and is a pure clearing institution, which has no competitive relationship with the third-party payment institutions; while UnionPay is both a clearing institution and a payment institution, which has a certain competitive relationship with the third-party payment institutions.
For ordinary consumers, "disconnection" has no real impact. But for the third-party payment institutions, it is a bone breaking blow, especially for the head institutions, the low rate of direct bank connection is no longer, the user scale is no longer a weight to increase the number of direct bank connection, and the competitive environment of large and small payment platforms has changed.
Wang Pengbo, an analyst at Analysys, believes that for third-party payment institutions, as the number of competitors in the clearing market increases, the rate will be marketized, the cost of Payment institutions will be reduced, and the services they enjoy will be better than before.
Chen Daofu, deputy director of the Financial Research Institute of the development research center of the State Council, once said publicly, "this is good for the relatively weak small payment institutions. However, although small and medium-sized Payment institutions will usher in a fairer competition environment, it may not change the pattern of the third-party payment market. After all, payment scenario and user traffic will still be the most important factor in the development of the third party payment, while the WeChat payment of over 450 million users of Alipay and over 800 million users is almost impossible for other third party payment institutions to shake.