Massive traffic, accurate user portraits, and increasingly rich consumption scenarios, the short video platform’s entry into the Internet financial business cannot be more successful. This article is from WeChat official account:Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe) , author: director, editor: Shi Chan, head Figure from: vision China
A very new thing is happening around us.
From mid-January 2021, when you open Douyin and want to pay for goods or swipe gifts, you will find that in addition to WeChat Pay and Alipay, you can also choose “Tik Tok Pay”. Similar to the Didi Pay you use after taking Didi, and the Meituan Pay after ordering takeout, now you can use a special payment tool for a short video.
Hedgehog Commune inquired about the Douyin payment account service agreement and found that the Douyin payment function is provided by “Wuhan Hezhong Yibao Technology Co., Ltd.”, which mainly includes collection or payment on behalf of others. Just in September 2020, ByteDance obtained a payment license from Wuhan Hezhong Yibao Technology Co., Ltd. through a wholly-owned acquisition; earlier in July 2019, the media disclosed that ByteDance had successfully applied for it. “Tik Tok Pay” trademark.
The short video community in the payment field is not limited to Douyin. In November 2020, some media reported that Kuaishou completed the acquisition of more than half of Yilian Pay at a consideration of 300 million yuan + certain shares, and obtained a payment license. In addition, Kuaishou also applied for the trademark “Laotie Pay”.
At the beginning of January 2021, the media disclosed that station B completed the “biliThe registration of domain names such as bilipay.com” and “bilibilipay.cn”. Brand name + “pay” is already the practice of domestic online payment platform URLs. For example, Tenpay’s Tenpay URL is tenpay.com and JD Pay URL jdpay.com There is also Alipay.com of Alipay.
It can be seen from the domain name registration that station B will have a considerable possibility to start payment business and build a payment brand. In addition to the website filing information, which can support this judgment, there are also payment-related positions released by station B on the recruitment website.
The TikTok, which has already launched the payment business, the Kuaishou who has obtained the license, and the B station that is eager to try the payment business, it seems that the video content platform to start the payment business has become a trend. From digital content to Internet finance, why are these platforms rushing to do so?
Before discussing the short video platform inbound payment, let’s take a look at the problems faced by other platforms when making payments “cross-border”.
“Why can’t Taobao use WeChat Pay? WeChat Pay has more active users than Alipay, and the handling fee is lower than Alipay.”
In July 2020, Meituan once cancelled the option of using Alipay for payment, which caused inconvenience to many users. Subsequently, Meituan founder Wang Xing said the above paragraph in Fanfou, pointing to a problem that people have long ignored-The most commonly used WeChat Pay and Alipay have a default handling fee.
This fee is not directly charged to C-end users, but to platforms such as Meituan, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Station B. Of course, the wool is on the consumer, and the ultimate payer is still the user.
But for the platform, this creates a problem-I’m very hardThe users are struggling to pay, but because they have been on WeChat and Alipay, they will be charged a channel fee. Creating a payment model that “no middlemen make the difference” has naturally become the goal of some new giants. As early as 2016, Meituan launched its own Meituan payment function.
For a long time, there have been few payment scenarios in Internet content products. Membership fees, rewards, and peripherals are almost the most important items. Compared with takeaway and e-commerce products, their volume is not large. The channel fees incurred are relatively small. But since 2020, the situation has begun to change.
First of all, live broadcasts with goods are blooming everywhere, making Douyin and Kuaishou become e-commerce giants with hundreds of billions of GMV. Kuaishou’s prospectus shows that in the first six months of 2020, its GMV(e-commerce turnover) reached 109.6 billion yuan, which is already Taobao, The fourth pole of e-commerce after JD.com and Pinduoduo; a document of the “Haitong Securities Byte Beat Expert Meeting” widely circulated on the Internet shows that Douyin’s annual e-commerce GMV is also in the hundreds of billions.
This makes Douyin and Kuaishou have to consider saving the cost of payment channels. In addition, for data security reasons, such large-scale and high-frequency transactions should be held in your own hands as much as possible. For a platform-based company, the transaction link is the key to the establishment and growth of the platform economy.
In addition, after short video platforms have grown into new giants, they are all pursuing an ecological closed loop. “Short video platforms are not just supporting facilities for live streaming of goods.” A short video industry observer told Hedgehog Commune, “Payment brands are standard on large platforms, and there will be more and more Many platforms have bought payment licenses and self-developed payment services.”
Speaking of Internet payment licenses, there is a “cold knowledge” that has to be pointed out-this license is equivalent to a “business license” for companies to carry out Internet payment business, issued by the financial management department, but has been suspended for many years.
It is not impossible to own it, as long as you spend enough money.
Currently, the most mainstream solution is to acquire a “licensed” company and become the controlling party of this company. This leaves a chance for Douyin, Kuaishou and other latecomers.
Beijing Commercial Daily reported that the “asking price” during the transfer of Internet payment licenses reached about 500 million yuan each in 2016. In addition, the cost of holding a payment license for a company is not low.