After Tencent Ali’s “sweeping face war”, the “experience economy” era of non-sense payment disputes
Editor’s note: This article comes from the technology from the media Liu Zhigang, the public number “Internet rivers and lakes” (ID: 13124791216), author Liu Zhigang.
In 1998, an article by Joseph Pine and James Gimore in the Harvard Business Review unveiled the experience economy. In 2013, the two co-authored Experiencing the economy: past, present and future, systematically explains the meaning of “experience economy”. This is explained in this way:
In a typical “day in life,” the interaction between consumers and business services is this: call the call center, wait at the convenience store counter, shout at the gas station, wait in the queue, wait in the bank window Wait for a taxi, take a shuttle bus, endure air travel, check out, visit a shopping center, pay for petrol, and more.
With these experiences, it’s not hard to understand why it’s difficult to achieve sales conversions, and profitability is affected, and workers’ wages and incomes are getting lower and lower – leading to a spiral down to worse service. .
In the view of Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, a bad user experience can be counterproductive to the improvement of corporate profitability, and the decline in profitability will lead to a decline in service efficiency, thus falling into user experience to service value. A vicious circle of decline.
In an experience-oriented business activity, a quality consumer experience can also reverse service value and efficiency.
The ratchet effect in the “feelless payment” in the “experience economy” era
In an increasingly digital world, people are much more sensitive to the experience than the value of the product or service itself. For example, in the past, the “soiled shoes” in the cusp of the wind, for example, people’s enthusiasm for the scarce version of the limited edition shoes is much higher than the ordinary models. The reason behind this is the deep emotion brought by the “scarcity” to the “concern”. Experience.
As a key node for the conversion of commodity value into monetary value, the payment method is also vital to its own experience. From the evolution of payment methods, every change in payment pattern is often accompanied by a payment experience. Upgrade.
Darwinian experience evolution theory
The birth of people’s payment behavior can be traced back to the ancient tribal period, from the birth of goods to money as a special payment tool, to the application of digital currency in commercial activities, the payment method is always along the “convenient, The trend of lightweighting, since the people entered the digital society, the application of new technologies such as card payment, fingerprint payment, and face payment has continuously triggered the innovation of payment patterns.
There are many products that follow an “evolutionary” path, with locks as an example, from wooden door latches, triple-lock locks, combination locks, to smart locks that now integrate biometrics, every new technology application. The “experience change” brought by it has achieved commercial success without exception.
Thus, it is certain that in this “Darwin” evolution, products and services that have the advantage of “experience innovation” will gradually replace the replacement of old products and services. Therefore, in the field of payment, “payment no feeling” will also become the ultimate form of payment method evolution.
Commercial landing without feeling payment under the ratchet effect
People also follow the “ratchet effect” in consumer behavior in the payment experience. The so-called “ratchet effect” means that people’s consumption habits are irreversible after they are formed, that is, they are easy to adjust upwards, and it is difficult to adjust downwards. That is to say, compared with their past peak income, consumers are more likely to increase consumption as income increases.
Taking the mobile phone unlocking method as an example, people who are accustomed to fingerprint payment have “sneaked in” the manual input password. After the iPhone is equipped with face recognition technology, people are “fascinated” with the “non-inductive” experience of facial recognition.
On the other hand, the lack of a sense of payment experience can also promote more consumer behavior.
To some extent, the dividend growth that broke out in the Internet era, in addition to enjoying the demographic dividend of social and economic development, the application of digital payment tools has virtually increased the frequency of people’s consumption: compared to having a real feel Banknotes, people’s consumption behavior becomes easier, and people are also inclined to pursue a more convenient payment experience.
The basis of non-inductive payment commercialization is that the fragmentation of consumption scenarios will make the difficulty of traffic conversion increase, and the importance of user perception in “experiential consumption” will become more and more prominent, and “payment is not felt” will “ “Shopping” has been transformed into “taking things”, which has improved the user’s payment experience while achieving the effect of rapid traffic conversion.
In the view of the Internet Rivers and Lakes team (VIPIT1), under the improvement of traffic conversion efficiency, the construction of the business ecosystem with “no-feeling payment” as the connection point is essentially an empowerment of B-side traffic efficiency transformation. . The shift from “shopping” to “taking things” is actually the dilution and integration of the highly targeted consumption scene in the “experience economy”.
The “non-feeling payment” path behind ETC’s rapid popularity
In the upcoming 5G Internet era, the commercial application of the Internet of Things will also open the window for the development of “non-inductive payment”. In the practical application of non-inductive payment, the travel field is at the forefront.
A few days ago, GM, BMW, Honda, Ford and Renault joined the “Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative”, which will develop auto payment through blockchain technology. It is reported that five manufacturers will open an empirical experiment in the United States in November.
In China, after the official cancellation of the highway toll gates, under the leadership of the Ministry of Communications, the penetration rate of ETC has embarked on the “fast lane”. According to the public data of the Ministry of Communications, at present, national ETC users have reached a total The total number of users reached 144,489,900. In addition, according to the report of Chinanews.com, Alipay has begun to pilot “non-inductive payment” in multiple scenarios such as ETC equipment-based gas station payment and parking lot payment in Shandong.
At present, the purpose of the five major auto companies to jointly invest in research and development of auto payment is to use the payment technology to get through the business ecology under the travel scene. In China, due to the improvement of the two payment ecosystems of Alipay WeChat, “no feeling payment” The role of more is the “experience empowerment” of the B-side business.
From the technical path of view, in the field of travel, ETC, license plate recognition, and digital ID based on blockchain technology encryption are the three mainstream technology paths for implementing non-inductive payment.
In China, the ETC payment experience is almost “no feeling”, and the penetration rate is much higher than the license plate payment. However, the handling procedures are cumbersome, and the disassembly and reimbursement process is extremely troublesome. The dedicated ETC requires the owner to take the identity when disassembling. The certificate, driving license, ETC card and OBU equipment will be dismantled at the ETC customer service center. After that, the ETC customer service center will be required to issue a dismantling order to the contracted bank for cancellation.
Compared with ETC, the “non-inductive” license plate payment deeply bound to the payment platform is much better for the user side, but there is also a “hard injury” on the one hand, the “non-inductive experience of license plate payment”. “Not equal to “no feelings pass.” At present, the application of non-inductive payment on the expressway is that the “non-inductive” is actually eliminating the actual transaction scenes such as finding money, swiping cards, and scanning codes, and realizing automatic deduction through technology such as license plate recognition.
Under the lack of complete ecological support, license plate payment is relatively “split” at the application level. Due to the existence of data barriers between different platforms, different APPs are required between different regions to achieve “no” in areas where license plate payment has been realized. Feeling to pay”, can not form a complete user experience.
The digital ID based on blockchain encryption technology is still difficult to implement for the current domestic situation, in complexIn the business environment and changing policy environment, digital payment technology based on automobile manufacturers is difficult to be widely used.
From the application scenario, the application of ETC in real-life scenarios is still limited to the field of travel. Whether it is from the underlying design of the technology or to the commercial application, the expansion space is limited, and thanks to the powerful payment ecology, Alipay As a third-party payment platform, WeChat has the potential to expand business scenarios.
As far as coverage is concerned, ETC is currently the most popular “non-feeling payment” technology, and Alipay’s combination of payment ecology and ETC has initially realized the construction of a “no-feeling payment” system for travel scenarios. After the face recognition has fully landed, the “feelless payment” approach with “experience economy” as the contact will gradually be applied with the landing of the Internet of Things. At that time, people will formally enter the era of “no sense of payment”.
Management of Face Payments: Ali Tencent Launches “Virden” Outposts
Compared with the insensible payment based on the encrypted digital ID, the mature commercialized face payment becomes the outpost position of “no sense payment”.
In December 2018, with Alipay’s launch of the face-paying device “蜻蜓”, the face payment that was closest to the non-inductive payment experience entered the stage of commercialization. Subsequently, WeChat launched the face-painting “Frog” and officially joined the “Frog”. battlefield”.
In April this year, on the “Alipay Open Day” in Beijing, Zhong Rong, the general manager of the Alipay Payments Division, once said to the outside world that “the company will invest 3 billion yuan to pay for the face”, and Alipay opened the face. The prelude to paying a subsidy war.
Although WeChat did not disclose the specific information of the subsidy amount, some insiders said that the subsidy of WeChat has reached “10 billion”.
For Ali and Tencent, whoever wins this “no-feeling” outpost will win the market-leading power of the experience-oriented era. As a result, under the impetus of the giants, the face payment began to quickly enter the stage of scale.
A new technology application for C-side often requires sufficient user education. Therefore, for the face-to-face payment that needs to be used as a “front-end position” by the B-side merchant, whether it is C-side user habit or B-side The lobbying of merchants requires capital and labor costs.
It is reported that Alipay has a maximum subsidy of 1600 yuan for each face-lifting device. On WeChat, the official also subsidizes up to 1,540 yuan for each machine. Under the reward, there must be a brave man. Under the giants’ crazy money, the face payment is quickly spread in the merchants. From supermarkets to convenience stores, from large shopping malls to subway stations, with a constant stream of funds, the face is paid at an unprecedented rate to occupy the cashier’s premises.
The steps are too fast, and it will inevitably lead to embarrassment.
Face recognition deployed on the front endMost of the equipments are produced in the OEM mode (OEM). In the promotion process, the sales staff’s exaggerated publicity on the technology itself also makes people doubt the brushing technology itself.
In the view of the Internet Rivers and Lakes team (VIPIT1), the reason why Ali and Tencent urgently need to subsidize the large-scale commercial use of face-to-face payment is that the reason is that after the “pain period” of user education, it is close. Under the “low-dimensional strike” of the “no-feeling” experience, the user stickiness caused by the ratchet effect will be doubled, that is, the user’s consumption habits and experience are easily adjusted upwards, and it is difficult to adjust downwards.
Therefore, whoever achieves the fastest scale, whoever has the initiative to open the door of “no sense of payment”.
Before, McKinsey’s senior partner Richard Foster mentioned in the book “The Advantages of the Attackers” that the corporate world has always had both attackers and defenders, only constantly attacking, knowing how to use new methods. It is only possible to make new changes to the challenge limit. The key to the attacker may be the technical advantage and constantly expand his ideas.
In the “face recognition” battle between WeChat and Alipay, the strength of both sides seems to be indistinguishable. In fact, Alipay, which has a first-mover advantage, has a more complete payment ecosystem.
In July last year, Ali’s unmanned supermarket began public beta in Hangzhou. From entering the store to shopping and leaving the store, each guest will be separately identified and complete the automatic debit payment of Alipay. Behind the unique technological sense of its IoT payment technology is the demonstration of the technology and ecological strength of the Ali payment system.
For WeChat, as the “Thucydic Challenger” in the payment field, the social-centered relationship chain is its strongest barrier, and it is also the advantage of “offensive” in the face recognition “war” After that, how to take social as the core and seize the opportunity of “experience economy” in the coming “no sense of payment” era is the key to the decisive battle of “Verdun” in the Internet of Things era.
Conclusion:
In the era of user-centered consumer economy, the experiential economy under the application of new technologies will become the key to the improvement of B-side conversion efficiency in the post-traffic era. In the next decade when 5G technology and Internet of Things technology are fully implemented, the “experience economy” with “no-feeling payment” as the contact will also enter the stage of commercial application. However, no matter how the technological development changes, one thing is certain: in the current sensitive consumer experience, only the user experience-centered products and services can win the trust and favor of consumers.