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Knock Alipay! Tencent's credit was distributed, and the second half of the payment war started

  

Since August, WeChat payment and Alipay have started a new round of subsidy burning war. US server After Alipay's sesame credit score swept the industry, Tencent quietly opened the query channel of "Tencent credit score", and the mobile payment war between the two giants also burned the credit system from the offline scene.

 WeChat Alipay

Re ignite smoke, in the final analysis, it is a data dispute

In China, WeChat and Alipay split most of the mobile payment market share, but the competition between WeChat and Alipay is actually high frequency and low frequency. As a social chat software, WeChat has far higher daily life and user stickiness than Alipay, and the existence of social network relationship chain has also greatly promoted the rapid growth of WeChat payment.

At Tencent's annual meeting at the end of last year, Tencent gave a cash reward of 100 million yuan to the WeChat payment team, which was interpreted at that time as: WeChat payment has surpassed Alipay offline. Although there is no third-party data to prove this conclusion, it is indeed an indisputable fact that Alipay is in a weak position offline.

In a recent article, the grapevine said, "In the past two or three years, WeChat payment has been very rapid, and has won the first half." In fact, the change of market share of Alipay and WeChat payment is also confirming this conclusion. In 2016, the market share of mobile payment, Alipay, was in an absolute dominant position, accounting for 68.4% of the market share. However, according to the latest data in the first quarter of this year, the trading share of Alipay fell to 53.7%, while the market share of WeChat payment rose to 39.51%.

Today, in China's third-party mobile payment market, Alipay and WeChat payment account for more than 90% of the market share. It is almost impossible to lose the other party and achieve dominance. However, the growth rate of WeChat payment far exceeded that of Alipay, which made the company worried. It may not be difficult to understand why Alipay will also choose to follow up on the third year after WeChat launched the "8.8 Cash Free Day" activity.

On July 31, WeChat payment announced that from August 1 to the whole August, WeChat would invest a huge amount of money to promote payment through incentive funds, vouchers, cash bonus and other channels. At the same time, Alipay also announced that it would increase the "reward" paid by Alipay within one week from August 1 to August 8, and there might be a reward of 4888 yuan for consumption of more than 2 yuan.

This is not the first time for the two giants to "fall in love and kill each other", but this time the subsidy is more powerful than ever before. In addition to cash subsidies for consumers, Alipay and WeChat payment have also started marketing together with merchants, that is, half of the benefits consumers enjoy may come from WeChat payment subsidies, and half may come from merchant subsidies.

Behind this noisy money burning war, it is actually a big data enclosure movement. The abacus of WeChat and Alipay is self-evident. It hopes to collect users' payment frequency, time, location, amount and other offline payment big data, and then splice a complete picture of users' consumption preferences, ultimately providing support for New Finance.

Sharing bicycles and paying for new variables of war upgrading

Looking back on the development of WeChat payment in the past four years, we can see that the key to its success is mainly to use its social advantages. With the help of red envelope marketing during the Spring Festival, WeChat has completed the binding of hundreds of millions of users' cards in a very short time. In the offline small consumption market, WeChat's penetration has begun to be impenetrable.

Faced with the outbreak of WeChat red envelopes, Alipay also followed suit, and launched the "Five Happiness Gathering" activity in the 2016 Spring Festival Gala. But since this year, after a series of reflections, Alipay has admitted that social networking is the wrong direction, and adjusted its focus back to financial innovation.

At the end of February, Alipay officially launched the collection code and placed it in an important position on the home page, so that merchants can launch the face-to-face collection function. In March, Alipay set up "Fortune Account" to open the platform and channels to help financial institutions serve financial customers; In April, Alipay established a "cashless alliance"... and this series of actions also consolidated the decline of Alipay.

Compared with WeChat payment, the financial system behind Alipay is more perfect. Alipay has accumulated many years of experience in the commercial field, which enables it to accumulate a number of capabilities, including payment, marketing, security, data, credit, financing and so on. Alipay is able to lead WeChat payment in the financial field, largely because of the credit system behind it - sesame credit.

In the past two years, Zhima Credit has been trying to build a credit city, offering the service of reducing or exempting deposits by credit in many fields such as hotels, renting houses, renting cars and sharing bicycles. Hu Tao, General Manager of Zhima Credit, said that these attempts are collectively referred to as "first enjoy, then pay". "It is not a payment company that will eliminate payment in the future, but credit."

At the same time, Zhima Credit also independently developed credit models based on the transaction data of Ali system and the credit data of Ant system, and sold them to banks, small loans and other lending institutions, so we can imagine the value behind this. In fact, Ant Financial is very clear about what its advantages are. Tencent has no more chips in the construction of personal credit and financial system.

It is also based on this that Tencent finally launched the "Tencent Credit Score" recently, which is largely to narrow the gap between Tencent and Alipay. For WeChat payment, one of the key variables is bike sharing. On August 7, WeChat officially announced that Mobil users ride without deposit. It is understood that users can participate in the "deposit free trial ride" by registering a Mobike account through WeChat applet, and enjoy five deposit free rides every week.

Similar cooperation is not new to us. When promoting small programs earlier, the use scenario of Mobil scanning code "run out" was very consistent with the scenario planning of WeChat for small programs, which also brought higher user conversion rate and growth rate for Mobil. According to the latest data from QuestMobile, with 233 million weekly uses, Mobike has led ofo's small yellow cars by 117 million times, nearly doubling the leading scale.

At such a key node, the WeChat applet launched the deposit free riding service in conjunction with Mobike, with the obvious purpose of promoting "Tencent Credit Score". Mobike has become the first step of Tencent's credit scene layout, and the win-win logic behind it is also easy to understand.

After less than three years of development, bike sharing has become a new favorite for more and more people around the world. However, from the current distribution of cities, the main competition between the two sides is still concentrated in the first and second tier cities. At present, there are still a large number of incremental markets in the third and fourth tier cities. The deposit free use of WeChat applet will undoubtedly lower the threshold for Mobil to obtain new users, which is undoubtedly a great benefit for users.

The main significance of this cooperation is also the credit layout behind Tencent. As a new thing, "Tencent credit score" must be far less perceived by users than Alipay, and Tencent also lacks the e-commerce consumption ecology like Alibaba. Although JD can provide some supplement, it may not be enough to build a perfect system data.

It is worth mentioning that Mobike has also launched "Mobike Credit Score" earlier, which mainly considers the user's behavior of using bike sharing scenarios. The high-frequency use scenario of Mobike will generate a lot of consumption data about payment and riding, which is actually a good supplement to Tencent's credit score. The keywords "Mobiy" and "deposit" are not new to users. With the help of the Mobiy app, the deposit free service for riding will undoubtedly help accelerate the popularization of Tencent's credit application scenario and help WeChat payment get through credit investigation, credit extension, personal loans and other sectors.

The second half of mobile payment starts with a duel between two men

To be fair, neither Alipay nor WeChat payment can win in a short time. WeChat payment has social advantages that Alipay does not have, and Alipay also has e-commerce and financial advantages that WeChat does not have. In the future competition, there will be more scenarios between the two sides.

1. Accelerate financial innovation outside the payment scenario

In the first half of this year, the regulatory environment for mobile payment has become more and more strict, including the establishment of a centralized deposit mode for reserves, the launch of the online payment clearing platform of non bank payment institutions (that is, the online platform), etc. Now the Central Bank has seized the "bull's nose" of third-party payment.

It can be said that payment is evolving into commercial infrastructure. In the foreseeable future, the profit of third-party payment based on payment function will be reduced. Because of this, payment giants are willing to spend a lot of money on large-scale subsidies, because only by mastering the payment flow can they master the information flow, capital flow and logistics, and ultimately mine and apply data to derive relevant value-added services.

Alipay has now developed such businesses as Ant Flower and Sesame Credit through users' consumption big data. In particular, Sesame Credit has penetrated into a large number of scenarios such as travel, rental and loan, and there is no small room for imagination. WeChat payment is also catching up with the help of "Tencent Credit Score". After making up for the credit system, can we achieve overtaking on Alipay at the corner?

2. Industry solutions for merchants

Zhang Yan, general manager of Ant Financial Services Business Department, once said that the value of payment lies far beyond payment. Merchants need not only payment services, but also a series of capabilities such as members, traffic, marketing, credit, insurance, credit, risk control, etc. Providing merchants with comprehensive combined services will become the top priority of future payment.

Although Alipay and WeChat payment are not weak in competing for big data of user payment, there are some differences between them in terms of data value output.

Alipay uses its ability to output data value, not only providing it to merchants, but also providing support for its own business; At present, Ant Financial has been able to provide popular solutions including brand retail, new smart city, medical services and property, and can provide solutions to a variety of industries including hotels, passenger transport, logistics, reputation catering, etc.

WeChat payment provides the consumption data deposited in the channel to third-party service providers for data analysis and utilization. WeChat is continuously opening up its underlying data capabilities, payment capabilities, including marketing capabilities, to the upper layer, and providing marketing, big data, financial services and membership services for businesses. At the same time, WeChat payment has gradually added small programs, social ads, members and other capabilities to improve the operating efficiency of offline businesses.

3. Incremental market for internationalization

In the context of the substantial growth in outbound demand of Chinese tourists, WeChat payment and Alipay have also turned their attention to overseas markets.

The sea going path of Ant Financial can be roughly divided into two aspects. One is to expand the overseas offline payment scenario of Alipay, which is mainly to meet the needs of domestic outbound tourists. The other is the technology+mode output, which is faced with the introduction of local wallets by local users. Currently, the regions covered are mainly South Korea, India and Southeast Asia.

For Alibaba, the internationalization of Alipay is not only for Chinese outbound tourists, but also for how to connect Alibaba's e-commerce ecosystem with overseas markets. Lei Feng.com said in a report, "In fact, if you raise the disputes in the domestic payment industry to the international level, you will find that Alipay has already become an embryonic empire, while other peers can only be called as elite soldiers at most."

By contrast, the outbound route of WeChat payment is mainly to expand the offline scene of WeChat payment and serve WeChat users. WeChat mainly implements an open policy, relying more on the cooperation model with overseas banking institutions and local service providers, giving more leadership to overseas businesses, and developing overseas payment ecology with them. What WeChat hopes to do is actually service and connection.

When promoting mobile payment services overseas, WeChat is always recommended to overseas users together with social applications. This conclusion was later confirmed by Liu Peng, director of WeChat payment product operation, "WeChat payment is a function in the WeChat ecosystem, and WeChat payment overseas is a complementary strategy with WeChat internationalization."

The strategies of the two sides to open the second half are different, but they reach the same goal by different routes. In fact, they are competing for scenes and data.