Produced by | Tiger Sniff Business Group
Author | Li Ling
Recently, Zhang Jun, director of public relations at Tencent, posted his own payment points in the circle of friends, which attracted the display of Tencent CEO Ma Huateng in the comment section-835 points. With this good score, “Little Brother challenged in the circle of friends.”
The author understands that most of the current WeChat payment sub-users’ compliance records come from the shared charging treasure. Since the electricity is used as an example, users will be prompted to apply for the “deposit-free rental charging treasure” service when using for the first time, except for WeChat. Payment points reached 550 points or more, this service also requires automatic deductions after the end of authorization.
From the entrance, the payment points are not subject to special treatment by WeChat. Like wealth management products such as Change Money Connect, users can enter me—payment—wallet—payment points in order to reach the page.
But there is no doubt that WeChat Pay is a heavy product of Tencent’s benchmark Ant Financial Service Sesame Credit. And what is certain is that as a necessary element of consumer installment products, the credit evaluation system of the payment sub-representative has been established,the long-rumored benchmark ant flower chant Product-“Distribution” will not be too long to go online.
“Now the payment war has entered the credit war, and WeChat payment points are the top priority.” An industry source told Hu Sniff that payment points cannot compete with Sesame Credit in the short term. In the long run, future payments Points can be the key to competition between Tencent and Ali in the financial sector.
Wechat payment is fully open, which means that the payment war is on again. Tencent chose to use credit reporting tools to counterattack the financial sector that lags behind Ali, which also means that this war has escalated from a payment dispute to a credit battle.
It’s time
For a long time, in the mobile Internet payment dispute between Tencent and Ali, Tencent was always the one behind. In the financial sector that has long been occupied by giants, most of Tencent’s layout is a conservative follow-up action.
Payment, as the underlying tool of finance, is almost a must-have capability for platform giants. The sesame credit launched by Ant Financial in early 2015 supports credit payment and consumption instalment in various scenarios, and has become the key to Alipay to retain consumers.
WeChat payment will be online at this time. Five years later, it is impossible to know whether Tencent can surpass Tencent through the establishment of the credit reporting system. However, from the perspective of the internal and external market environment, it is now the right time for Tencent to make up for the missing links in the financial sector.
In recent years, deferred payment, installment payment, and interest-free payment, etc., which have enjoyed repayment first, have gradually been accepted by the public. Similar to consumer financial products like Huabei and Jingdong Baitiao, the occasional consumption of users has been cultivated into daily life. Sex consumption. And this habit of early consumption has become the mainstream consumption habit after 95, which also affects more middle-aged and elderly people.
Compared with the development of user consumption habits, the data growth of WeChat Pay is more like icing on the cake.
In the field of consumer finance, where the underlying data is dominant, financial businesses can gain an advantage. “WeChat Pay’s commercial payment number is now 2.3 to 2.5 times that of Alipay.” The industry source said, “WeChat Pay’s commercial payment number is growing rapidly, and it is no longer that red envelope accounts for one-third of the number. Payment method.”
The substantial increase in the number of business transactions means that Tencent has accumulated enough bills for consumption scenarios, and the user performance data it has mastered is gradually enriched, so it is logical to do business endorsements.
The growth momentum of WeChat Pay can also be confirmed from the Tencent earnings report.
Tencent’s financial business has grown rapidly since 2018. From 2019, Tencent will provide financial technology and corporate servicesDisclosure as a separate section in the financial report. Tencent Finance includes financial products such as payment, insurance, wealth management, and funds, while corporate services are mainly Tencent Cloud.
In terms of recent revenue, Technology finance and cloud services are expected to take over the gaming business and become Tencent’s future “money printing machine”.
For the entire year of 2019, Tencent’s financial technology and corporate services revenue totaled 101.355 billion yuan, accounting for 27% of total revenue. And Tencent Games, the annual revenue of 114.7 billion yuan, accounting for 30% of total revenue. In other words, fintech revenue is only three percentage points less than Tencent’s cash cow business.
Specifically, in the fourth quarter of 2019, Tencent’s total revenue was 105.767 billion, and this segment’s revenue accounted for 28% (29.920 billion yuan), which is almost the same as the game revenue contribution (29%).
Even under the impact of the epidemic in the first quarter of 2020, online and offline payment activities decreased, and Tencent’s financial revenue was 26.475 billion yuan, accounting for only two percentage points of the total revenue.
The market environment is in place, and the internal growth rate has laid a solid foundation for users. The timing of Tencent’s credit reporting system can be said to be just right. But after all, it is five years late, can Tencent rely on WeChat payment points to get tickets to enter Top1?
Legacy advantage
The importance of the credit information system has become apparent when Ant Financial has opened up merchants with Sesame Credit and lowered the threshold for consumption. The WeChat payment point came online in high-profile after more than a year of trial operation, attracting a high-profile show from a senior executive such as Ma Huateng. Its importance is self-evident.
The official definition of WeChat payment is a comprehensive personal credit score based on personal identity characteristics, payment behavior, and personal credit history evaluation. At present, its access areas include shared rentals, travel transportation, shopping and entertainment, life services, and accommodation reservations. It seems to cover almost the main consumer areas, but the application field currently implementedThe view is extremely limited, with a total of more than 1,000 services accessed.
Under the introduction article of the official WeChat Pay official account, some people asked, “How do I open a hotel without a deposit or a room?” Some readers also said, “Looking at the WeChat payment branch says that Ctrip is OK, but the result is on Ctrip. Membership is still not possible.” The author replied that merchant access is required and currently supports Wanda hotels. On Ctrip, it depends on whether the specific hotel supports it.
Through the author’s own experience and feedback from surrounding colleagues, users who use WeChat to pay more frequently and have micro-loan loan performance have a relatively high score. Because such users accumulate more consumer bills on WeChat, the dimensions that can be evaluated are more comprehensive.
WeChat Pay is launched online, which means that Tencent is finally going to make up a vital link in technology finance—performance credit. And this link can make up, which is closely related to the development of WeChat itself.
If some people questioned the necessity of WeChat applets a year ago, the convenience of using applets has now overturned this doubt. With the establishment of WeChat’s own ecology, WeChat applet + public account + WeChat payment has formed a perfect business closed loop. At this stage, the competition between Tencent and Ali is essentially a comparison of the thickness of consumer bills.
“Either payment points or credit points, there are only a few reference dimensions. Everyone’s level is similar, and the conditions are also similar. The data available from the government are almost available. There is data.”
Industry believes that Ant Financial and Tencent are not much different in financial scenarios. The advantage of the former is that the data base and technology are good. The latter has the largest user pool in the entire network, but the weakness is the lack of finance. Performance data. “At present, the bill thickness corresponding to this piece of data, WeChat and Meituan are far inferior to Ant Financial.”
But the thickness of the bill will accumulate as the application scenarios increase. On the one hand, the new users of Alipay peaked, and currently only the frequency and use scenarios of users can be increased. On the other hand, Alipay’s unique Taobao e-commerce data, Tencent has also been supplemented on e-commerce platforms such as Meituan, Pinduoduo and WeChat stores.
By 2020, the combined monthly active users of WeChat and WeChat will reach 1.165 billion. I am afraid that no app in China can compete with its users. In today’s economic situation, the mining of sinking users will be a major focus of the consumer finance market. And this also means that WeChat, which is richer than Alipay in the sinking market, will have more room for growth.