Homogeneity competition needs business transformation, cooperation is the main melody of future development

In recent years, with the development of information technology and the continuous improvement of the small payment market, the commercial prepaid card market has developed rapidly and attracted wide attention of the industry. The International Symposium on Innovation and development of prepaid cards, sponsored by the China Society for payment and clearing, was held in Beijing recently. From the central Bank payment and Settlement division, the Chinese Pay and Clearing association responsible person, domestic and international prepaid card industry experts and scholars, the main head of the prepaid card agencies together, in order to explore the market demand and regulatory requirements of the prepaid card development model to promote prepaid card business innovation and transformation, promote the regulation and sustainable development of prepaid card industry and actively build suggestions

Homogenization Competition Needs business transformation

At present, commercial prepaid cards can be divided into two categories according to the issuer, the single use commercial prepaid card and the multi-purpose commercial prepaid card, and form the industrial chain composed by the card issuer, the accepting organization, the purchase card and the consumer. Prepaid cards play an increasingly active role in facilitating public payment, reducing cash use and promoting consumption. With the development of the market, prepaid card institutions have been constantly improved. Data show that in 2011 a total of 58 institutions were authorized to engage in prepaid card issuance and processing business, prepaid card market has entered an important stage of development. Shanghai Sheng Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd. Deputy general manager Hong Xiaojin said, prepaid cards in lieu of petty cash and its own discount on the advantages of a bank card incomparable advantage, while the continuous improvement of the real-name purchase adapter prepaid cards more secure and convenient use.

At the same time, the single of prepaid card business model and profit way, plus simple price competition, etc, may cause some small enterprises to appear larger business risk, this kind of instability is not conducive to the long-term development of prepaid card industry. In addition, the current situation of waste in the consumption field, high differentiation cost and scarcity of high-end service industry also drives the transformation of the prepaid card industry.

At the seminar, Shingwen, deputy director of the central bank's payment and settlement division, said that the single and homogeneous issue of prepaid card products in China was actually the main problem facing the development of the prepaid card market, especially the price competition. Addressing this problem can only be done through business innovation, he says, including a series of innovations in prepaid card products, management and services. The prepaid card enterprise should make the prepaid card develop into a kind of small, convenient, preferential and safe payment tool through the transformation. "Beijing Business Tong Network Technology Co., Ltd., chairman of the Ji Fei such advance card enterprises in the future transformation direction." There are experts suggested that as a prepaid card industry, the transition is inevitable, the future prepaid card in the past, the function of large payment will shift to more special, convenient, small payment function.

Achieving regulatory and innovation compatibility

Feng, chairman of the Consumer Services organization, said in his speech that the "post-licensing" era, after the introduction of a series of national regulatory policies, prepaid card industry will gradually move towards standardization, marketization, transparency. At the same time, the industry self-regulation system gradually formed and sound, so prepaid card needs to be transformed to adapt to the new regulatory requirements and market demand.

In order to standardize the market order of prepaid cards, serious financial discipline, prevent financial risks and promote anti-corruption, the central bank published in February this year the circular on regulating the issuing of prepaid cards and electronic cash by banking financial institutions to standardize the issuing of magnetic stripe prepaid cards and electronic cash items for commercial banks. At the end of October 2011, the central bank issued the "Payment institutions prepaid card Business management measures (draft)", the use of multi-purpose prepaid cards issued, accepted, used, recharge, supervision and management, and other aspects of the specification. The participants in the prepaid card industry experts believe that the central bank of the introduction of relevant policies and follow-up measures to implement gradually, indicating that China's prepaid card industry is moving from disorder to norms.

With the active promotion of the central Bank and the market participants, the China Payment Clearing Association was established in May 2011, and subsequently established the China Payment and Clearing Association prepaid card Working Committee. This marks the initial completion of the prepaid card industry self-regulation system, which is beneficial to the advance card industry to strengthen the industry self-discipline and internal coordination under the guidance of the Association, and to guide market regulation and healthy development by industry consultation mechanism.

Cooperation is the main melody of future development

Liu, deputy governor of the central bank, said in the meeting of the bank card payment, network payment application and prepaid card Working committee of the China Payments and Clearing association that enterprises in prepaid card field should compete fully and realize business transformation as soon as possible. He said that the future of prepaid card industry will rely mainly on competition, restructuring and optimizing the development of industries.

Referring to the future of the prepaid card enterprises in the direction of transformation, Feng suggested that each enterprise should be in accordance with their own resources and ability to find and do a good job in the prepaid card industry chain nodes, and in these nodes to seek differentiated management, in the differential management to achieve large-scale. The future prepaid card industry should be a single service to the initiative of Cross-border Learning, use, integration and transformation, to provide customers with the field of action-related convenience, the provision of "one-stop" and "universal" convenience services; vigorously explore individual users, provide consumer services, innovative payment services, and with the internet to pay, Mobile payment and other innovative services trend convergence to achieve prepaid card market and industry upgrades.

Experts also said that any form of "singles" will enable prepaid card enterprises to miss the opportunity for rapid development, cooperation will become the main theme of Third-party payments in the future. For the multi-purpose prepaid card enterprise, the cooperation object mainly includes commercial bank, merchant, POS operator and other third party payment organization.

"The executive vice president of China Payment and Liquidation Association, Caihongbo concluded, prepaid card enterprises through the strengthening of industry self-discipline, sincere cooperation, promote business innovation and service transformation, and actively apply to the convenience, the People's field, and strictly enforce the laws and regulations enacted by the regulatory bodies, will provide people with more convenient means of payment and better payment services. Prepaid card industry innovation and development will be vigorous forward, China's non-cash electronic payment cause will be healthy operation.