Consignment of small electronic products such as MP3 and MP4. In early October 2003, he put a 90% new Fuji digital camera on Taobao at a price of 750 yuan-the domestic price of the camera is about 2,000 yuan. Soon, Jiao Zhenzhong from Xi’an Technological University issued a purchase intention.
This cross-border transaction has stalled due to payment methods. Obviously, the cash on delivery and bank transfer methods commonly used by C2C transaction sites cannot gain the full trust of both parties.
The secured transaction function just launched by Taobao.com has entered Cui Weiping’s vision. He sent the payment link to the other party, and Cui Zhenzhong clicked to complete the payment. The first secured transaction was born.
At the same time, the office door of the Taobao Guaranteed Transaction Team was slammed open, and a financial girl shouted excitedly: Here is a transaction, confirm it!
Cheng Ying later recalled that the transaction was actually not so smooth. Jiao Zhenzhong regretted it for a while, but the financial girl is a Cantonese who is particular about feng shui and wanted to get a good “color head”, so she started to grind hard, and finally convinced the buyer to complete the first order. At this time, it was only two hours before the secured transaction function went online.
If you zoom out, you will see that when these young people gather for a 0 to 1 breakthrough, most of them do not realize that they have participated in a magnificent event. The story of change. For the people in it, the young people’s daring to try, the trust between strangers, these things that can be seen in front of themp>
At this time, the legend of the lakeside garden has moved from the original “16 Buildings, 1 Unit, Room 202” to a two-story villa in the same community. Ni Xingjun pushed the door in, and a dozen young people shuttled among them. His interviewer was named “Sanfeng” and his colleagues named “Xuzhu”, “Ake” and “Yang Guo”. The roster was in front of him. He looked at it and found that there are not many martial arts characters in Jin Yong’s works. Picked “Miao Renfeng”-this is the role in “Snow Mountain Flying Fox”, martial arts extremely high, unsmiling.
Ni Xingjun, who has an introverted nature, touches the unique “playability” of young people for the first time in his work. People discuss, argue, and do things in a not-so-spacious house. The rare form of entertainment is “handstand”.
Later, after his colleagues got acquainted, he was affectionately called “Old Miao”. Once, I accidentally ran into “daughter Miao Ruolan” at the company, and the surrounding people joked that “father and daughter recognize each other”, and everyone quickly laughed. Alibaba’s unique flower name culture brings a rare closeness and amusement.
If you are engaged in people, Alipay’s background is young.
On April 7, 2003, Jack Ma selected more than a dozen young people from the original Alibaba B2B business, signed the next English confidentiality agreement, and started Taobao’s entrepreneurial road. Sun Yutong (nickname: God of Wealth), one of Alibaba’s “Eighteen Arhats”, took up the heavy burden as the person in charge.
The original intention of secured transactions was simple. As a C2C website, individual buyers and sellers on Taobao often complete transactions through traditional methods such as offline delivery due to lack of trust, which greatly hinders transaction efficiency. The God of Wealth often soaks in user forums to communicate needs with users. Following the pain point of the “trust problem”, a concept of secured transaction was born: the buyer puts the money into Taobao’s bank account in the bank and confirms the receipt , Taobao sends the money to the seller.
This young team quickly built the embryonic form of Alipay. With Cui Weiping’s first transaction, a payment revolution came quietly.
As the transaction volume continues to rise, Alipay has also developed a “streaking” culture. In the two-story building in Lakeside Garden, the person in charge will run naked every time the transaction number breaks through a new high. The day when the transaction volume exceeded 7 million, that is, a certain day in the first half of 2005, Lao Miao was unprepared, and everyone ran around naked in the office without any preparation.
These are the passionate years that belong exclusively to young people.
At that time, Alipay had started independent operations and independently explored business models. For a long time, it went smoothly, with the transaction volume soaring from 7 million to 1.2 billion.
During the rush, numbers became the most exciting indicator. The climax of the “streaking” culture came when Shao Xiaofeng (named Guo Jing), the president of Alipay at the time, became “Zorro”. On that day, Alipay’s daily transaction volume exceeded 1.2 billion. Guo Jing wore a black hat, black sunglasses, and ran naked to celebrate with a black cloak and red shorts.
Sober comes in 2010.
This year’s annual meeting, Alipay students who were expecting to be commended by the group unexpectedly ushered in Ma Yun’s fierce curse: “Rotten! Too bad! Extremely bad!”-Not long ago, the founder When attending an event at Tsinghua University, he talked about Alipay. He said that he had never bought anything on Taobao and had never used Alipay. Obviously, he is not satisfied with the user experience of the product.
Dissatisfaction mainly stems from the payment success rate. At that time, Alipay’s payment success rate was only 60%, and even the 80%-90% success rate requirement of its own Taobao.com could not be met.
The young side is passion. Behind the continuous increase in transaction volume, there are young people’s crazy pursuit of speed. The other side of young people is roughness, indulging in the ecstasy of data, young people tend to lose the endurance and fineness of long-term polished products.
At this time, the beating of the parents’ clubs is very important.
growth
Young people must learn to grow up after all.
As soon as the Chinese New Year in 2010, Peng Lei, who had just taken up the role of Alipay’s CEO, convened a meeting with team members. The meeting was scheduled to be held at Liangzhu Hotel, 2349 Moganshan Road, Hangzhou. The brainstorming lasted for four days, discussing during the day and having dinner together at night.
The final consensus is to increase the payment success rate and fully return to user value. This meeting is the “Camel Conference” to reverse the development direction of Alipay.
Picture: Alipay “Camel Conference” in 2010
Soon after, Alipay launched “Quick Payment”. Starting from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Alipay has successively opened up the network of more than a dozen banks across the country. Since then, online shopping does not need to use traditional payment methods such as online banking and USB. The success rate of quick payment is as high as 93%.
Growth is quietly carried out amidst disruption and change. The next major product is Yu’e Bao.
The birth of Yu’E Bao was inseparable from two men named “Ming”.
Ming Guoming joined Taobao in July 2011. Taobao was ambitious at this time and was planning to launch a wealth management channel to sell wealth management, insurance and other products. Guoming, who has many years of working experience, became the relevant person in charge. At almost the same time, his long-time friend Zhou Xiaoming also joined Tianhong Fund, taking on the important task of developing new channels such as the Internet and e-commerce. Zhou has more than 20 years of experience in the securities industry.
The two tried to cooperate, but they were helpless, and it didn’t go as expected-Taobao wealth management channel has never been followed, and Tianhong has not found an ideal sales channel.
Fortunately, Alipay offered Zhou Xiaoming an olive branch.
At this time, Alipay is facing challenges. Fast payment has boosted the payment success rate, but has led to a significant reduction in the phenomenon of users recharging their Alipay accounts. Some people in the company believe that quick payment reduces the value of Alipay accounts.
Comparing product functions is a difficult problem, and the team needs to find a win-win solution.
At this time, the motherland has also transferred to Alipay.
During discussions with colleagues, everyone agreed that if the assets in the account can be increased, users must be willing to keep the money in their Alipay account. The currency fund is less volatile and is an ideal asset appreciation choice.
After many rounds of discussions, the “monetary fund + consumer payment” model is finally determined. Since then, two friends with the word “Ming” have also had the possibility of continuing cooperation-Alipay’s partner has been finalized as Tianhong Fund.
Zhou Xiaoming still remembers that in December 2012, he met with Fan Zhiming, the president of the domestic business group of Ali Small and Micro Financial Services Group, and planned to introduce the prototype of Yu’ebao model in 3-5 minutes. Unexpectedly, in just one minute, Fan Zhiming confirmed his plan.
“It’s like you want to go to a place too much. When there is no road, you suddenly find the road under your feet.” Zhou Xiaoming said.
In June 2013, Yu’e Bao was officially launched. Two major innovations-starting at 1 yuan and real-time payment made this product a great success. In just one month after it went online, Yu’e Bao’s asset scale exceeded 10 billion yuan, setting off a trend of nationwide financial management. As of February 2014, Yu’e Bao’s users had exceeded 81 million, with assets exceeding 400 billion yuan.
You must know that as of the beginning of 2014, the entire money fund market was only 900 billion yuan in size. In other words, Yu’ebao took less than a year and almost won half of the money fund market.
Zhou Xiaoming later wrote an article to recall:
Those who participated in the Yu’e Bao project are ordinary young people (I and the old comrades of the motherland Ming have also become younger because of this), and they are called “Diaosi” in popular terms. None of these people have a “high-end atmosphere” background, no dazzling resume, no golden “label”, and no staggering “circle”. But they are all experts in their field of work, and strong men with unpretentious but dreamy hearts.
Yes, it is this group of so-called “Diaosi” who created Yu’e Bao and changed the outlook on financial management of a generation of young people.
For a long time, buying bank wealth management products has been the only financial management channel for most Chinese, but the starting amount of 50,000 yuan has discouraged many people. This is especially true for young people who are new to society.
Of course, the initial attitude of most people is cautious.
In the same year when the product was launched, some users were curious about Zhihu and asked: “Is Yu’E Bao a Ponzi scheme?” The early Sina Ai asked users’ doubts: “When paying with Yu’e Bao, the mobile phone text message reminds the school Those who verify the code are all scammers, please don’t disclose it, can I still enter the verification code?” On the Douban of Wenqinghui, some people were also worried: “Have you ever used Yu’e Bao? Is it a good deal?”
Time finally gave the answer.
In 2017, survey data showed that Yu’e Bao was used asAmong users who prefer financial management, the post-80s accounted for 44%, and the post-90s accounted for 45%.
Young people have become the mainstream of financial management. Such data may have exceeded Zhou Xiaoming’s expectations. In 2012, when he gave a lecture on the fund within Alipay, he was surprised that young people did not know much about the fund.
Nowadays, there are only a few young people who don’t know Yu’e Bao.
Ecology
March 2013, Mogan Mountain Valley Naked Valley Resort, Huzhou, Zhejiang. Led by Peng Lei, the core executive team of Alipay arrived one after another. After several days of closed-door meetings, this time, Alipay decided to formally transform from a payment company to a financial services company, known in history as the “Moganshan Conference.”
Alipay will be ecological.
With the introduction and implementation of Yu’ebao, the financial service products established around finance, such as Sesame Credit and Insurance, have also become key links in the ecological strategy. Soon after the Moganshan meeting, Alipay was upgraded to a small and micro financial service group, the full name is the small and micro financial service group, which was later called Ant Financial.
New names always mean new expectations and missions.
In October 2014, the preparations for the official establishment of Xiaowei Financial Services were completed and the company was renamed “Ant Financial Services”. CEO Peng Lei said, “The reason why it is called Ant is because the company started as a small and micro company.Only interested in the world of Xiaowei. Ant Financial carries too many small and micro dreams and likes to walk with more small partners. Just like ants, although small, they work together and radiate amazing power. They will never be on the road to the destination. give up. “
In nature, the power of ants is often impressive. They have a clear division of labor, and they are good at collaboration, so they can move multiple behemoths with their weak bodies.
The projection of ant power in the business field is Alipay’s reshaping of young people’s consumption and financial habits. After Alipay used Yu’E Bao to change the financial management habits of young people, they embarked on a new journey-Sesame Credits.
In the era of credit consumption, Hu Tao, who was the general manager of Sesame Credit, has been eager for many years.
This senior woman with neat short hair graduated from the National University of Defense Technology and has worked for China Merchants Bank for many years. She knows the bank’s difficulty in determining the credit risk of users. As a financial practitioner, she attaches great importance to the issue of trust. After her daughter was born, her first reaction was to teach her to be an honest person in the future.
She joined Ant Credit in January 2015. One month later, the public beta of Zhima Credit Score, the first domestic personal credit score, began. With the support of data, Zhima Credit Score presents personal credit status in five dimensions: credit history, behavior preference, performance ability, identity traits, and personal connections.
The ant carried the behemoth again.
Previously, credit consumption has not been popularized in China, and 75% of the people still do not have a credit card. For most people, “credit” is just a term that cannot be quantified.
Hu Tao’s wish gradually came to fruition. In March 2018, Harrow Bicycle announced that it would no longer charge any deposits for users with a score of 650 or more. Standing at the press conference, she was quite emotional, “In the future, in renting houses, renting cars, renting items and more, try to eliminate deposits with us.”
Looking back, the emergence of Sesame Credit Score is self-evident.
For the business society, it fills the trust gap between consumers and businesses, and makes business activities more convenient. In industries such as hotel reservations and car rentals, traditional deposits are indispensable because of the asymmetry of information on the credit of both parties to the transaction. What Zhima Credit is doing is to build a bridge between the two information islands of consumers and businesses, and optimize the business link after eliminating the “deposit payment” link.
And young people love credit scores. The wave of new technology has brought shared bicycles, shared cars, and shared power banks, but at least 99A deposit of 200 yuan is not friendly. Credit score solves this pain point in a light way.
Compared with credit scores, Huabei’s “word of mouth” is much more complicated. It has helped many young people achieve their first credit consumption in their lives. According to data from the initial stage of Huabei’s launch, 33% of its users are born in the 90s and 48.5% are born in the 80s. When more and more people form a habit of Huabei, the 1st of each month becomes that special day-last month’s Huabei bill will be announced on this day. Huabei has thus become a product that countless young people love and hate.
From credit scores to flowers, a set of credit ecology has been quietly completed in just a few years.
There is no doubt that the imagination of the credit eco-city is broad enough: when the credit mechanism extends from Alipay to all aspects of life, an ideal society where everyone fulfills their promises does not seem to be so remote.
Indigenous people
The corners of the mouth are raised, the antennae are flying, and a young and energetic ant has been the logo of Ant Financial for 6 years.
Until August of this year, it was replaced by newcomers. The new logo only retains the head of the ant, as well as the big eyes and tentacles. The overall look is round and simple, which is much more mature than the previous version.
At this time, Ant Financial has changed its name to Ant Group. Financial services have never been all of it. As early as June 2018, itIt is clear that globalization and technology are important strategic directions.
As the ants of technology companies, the impact on young people is more profound-the latter’s consumption and financial habits are all based on “cashless”.
The 2019 “College Student Consumption Insight Report” shows that over 95% of post-00 college students often pay online, and the ratio of online purchases to offline purchases of daily necessities is 6:4.
The Financial Times of the United Kingdom observed in 2018 that the Chinese millennials, that is, the cashless consumption habits of the post-00s generation, interviewed Ant Financial. In an interview, a vice president of the latter said that the rapid adaptation and consumption habits of millennials have created the company’s huge commercial success.
Essentially, ants conform to the consumer lifestyle of the younger generation, and thus create the digital life of the indigenous people.
This is a new set of business rules, covering all aspects of social life from entertainment, travel, food and drink to financial management, and the central point is “scene”. It was proposed by Peng Lei in 2015. Previously, the social product WeChat raided mobile payment through red envelopes, forcing Alipay to rethink its strategic positioning. After the Spring Festival in 2015, Jack Ma and senior executives reached a consensus at a meeting: to do payment-based consumption scenarios.
Since then, the battlefield of ants has changed from a simple payment tool to a battle for life service scenarios.
Young people are still the protagonists in the scene. “Are there young people around you who don’t use Alipay?” “What’s the mentality of young people who don’t use Alipay?” Zhihu platform always has such questions. From ant forest, food delivery, taxi to consumer finance, young people can always meet their old friends in these scenes.
The ants who have grown up do not shy away from telling the world about their ambitions. For example, in the first half of this year, Hu Xiaoming, then CEO of Ant Financial, announced that “Alipay is the world’s largest open platform for digital life.”
This upgrade is regarded by the industry as a “critical moment” for Alipay for 15 years. Its slogan has become “Life is good, Alipay”, and the home page of the App has also added life service entrances such as takeaways, outings, and performances.
This story of trillions of market value began with the secured transaction of 750 yuan. In the next ten years, courage, adventure and trust are mixed with these words, in people’s common sense, It also belongs to young people.
However, success is never about winning the lottery. Ants do not believe in luck. In the biological world, they are also doers.
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