Remit the world: Start a business in a monopolistic environment

At the start of the day, remittances found a way to compete with industry giants for differentiated competition-focusing on distribution chain payments, changing people's lives and spending habits.

Critical moment: In the 2006, China's electronic payment industry has entered a relatively monopolistic environment, but it is still full of opportunities.

Key choice: Zhou Ye decided to resign from the position of general manager of UnionPay Electronic Payment company and create a remittance world.

Coping Strategies: Choose to aviation, online games, finance, such as funds as a breakthrough, pay the force of electronic payment, around the industry's supply chain or distribution chain innovation.

Strategy results: The 2009 transaction amount was 17 times times higher than the previous year, the financial crisis under the influence of the 2009 still achieve nearly 4 times times growth, and show sustained high growth momentum.

In July 2006, Zhou Ye, general manager of the UnionPay Electronic Payment Company (ChinaPay), left the domestic client, the only Third-party payment company with a government background, and founded the Remittance Network Technology Co., Ltd. The reason for his decision was simple-he decided that in the next few years electronic payments would enter a period of rapid growth and China was bound to usher in an explosive growth in demand for electronic payments, but now the form of payment has been unable to cope with this trend and must create innovative institutions to meet the ever-changing demand for payments

Electronic payment has been a common practice in just 15 years, and the development of paper money has influenced people's daily life and business activities in every aspect. The latest figures from the central bank show that with China's rapid economic development, the whole society's payments are multiplying every year, but the central bank's printing money has barely increased in the past 20 years, has been stable at around 3 trillion, and the cash flow rate is declining, the current cash payments accounted for the total amount of Chinese enterprises to pay less than 1%. Industry analysts further point out that Chinese society has entered a period of non-cash payment, and electronic payment will be one of the major trends in future payment methods.

But that year the Chinese electronic payment industry has entered the era of relative monopoly, Taobao Alipay and UnionPay's Chinapay and Pat Tenpay accounted for more than half of the transaction amount, a variety of various kinds of payment companies have more than 50, "you will always meet someone in the free, and is the industry in the first several companies in the free. "Zhou Ye said. How to realize the late-onset and first-come, the introduction of differentiated business model has become the world's imminent problem.

And at the end of 2009, 4 years later, remittance has already stepped out of its own path: it has broken the "pay-for-money" situation that the electronic payments industry has always faced; in an industry with an average annual growth rate, the 2008-year transaction amount has increased 17 times-fold compared with 2007, The 2009, under the impact of the financial crisis, still achieved nearly 4 times times growth, if the turnover of today has exceeded 100 million yuan, and has shown a good momentum of sustained rapid growth, while the number of staff remitted from 30 to more than 200 people, Shanghai headquarters office space from 400 square meters expanded to 4000 square meters, Also successively in Beijing, Shenzhen opened branch.

Looking for the big gap

In the beginning of the remittance, Zhou Ye to find a competition with the industry giants to differentiate the path-the structure of China UnionPay relies on its bank card basis, Alipay is the structure of Taobao users on the basis, are facing a wide range of customers. After repeated thinking, the remittance decision will focus on the distribution chain payment, focusing on business-to-business, to industrial chain as the starting point, from top to bottom to improve the flow of capital flow across the entire industry chain, the entire electronic payment industry bigger, and ultimately change people's lives and consumption habits. The Aviation ticketing field became the ideal target for the world, and also earned the first bucket of gold for remit payment. Before remittance enters, although the aviation pays the domain to have many players, but the most pays the company to provide is still the single link service, or is based on the single product application. So Zhou Ye plan to get through the entire ticket distribution of the industrial chain, hope in the excavation of the market gap, while deeper embedded in this industry.

In the past, 80% of the air tickets finally reached the passenger hand must experience from the airline, air ticket level, level two, terminal agents and many other industrial chain links, in the payment of remittance products before the intervention, the industry's account period is quite long, because of this, the lack of funds "first-class agent" often can not be timely with the airlines to deal with the pen, And the airline's payback period is also very long. Capital turnover becomes the short board of airline ticketing industry chain, in response to this crux, remitted the introduction of the "credit payment" of this product, that is, "first-class agent" in the online after the single, remittance will this fund to advance to the airlines, and other "level agent" will be the funds back, and then through the online platform to pay, Remit to the airline according to the amount of transaction to collect a certain rate.

"Before we enter the Air ticketing field, the first level agent's funds can only turnover 15~20 times a year, and remittance payment products will increase the turnover of this fund to 80~100 times each year, the same money turnover of the number of times, the profit will be more lucrative." At the same time, the innovation of payment also promoted the development of electronic ticketing, from less than 10% of the total ticket to today's 25%-30%. "Zhou Ye said.

From the initial amount of 8 million yuan per day to the current credit line of hundreds of millions of credit lines, remittance has been maintained without a record of bad debts. According to Zhou Ye recalls: "When we launched credit payments, all airlines think we are crazy, because they think the ticket agent's entry threshold is lower, the enterprise generally small, and management is not too strict." But in fact, we found that air ticketing compared to the traditional business is much safer, because the ticket is never in stock, will not yahuo; and we have 5,000 of the first-level agents of profitability, cash flow and management of the status of each screening, but also set up a complete monitoring system and tracking rating system. ”

200 billion yuan a year out of the seats calculation, a ticket from the airline through the layers of circulation to reach the end of the passenger hand, to pay the company means at least 500 billion yuan trading market. This huge cake attracts countless paying companies to catch up. "In the face of competition from the latter, Zhou Ye chose to establish a separate partition with competitors through more diversified services," he said. The company has currently for the Southern Airlines, Air China, China Eastern Airlines, such as the call Center for 8 airline companies to provide telephone payments, the integration of a number of bank credit cards, through the telephone keyboard from the transmission of credit card information and encryption of the way to meet the needs of customers at any time to purchase tickets. On the other hand, this service has also transformed the call center from the traditional cost center to the profit center in a certain degree. "Now 1 of every 7 tickets in the country are paid through remittances, and this year it will continue to grow at a high rate," he said.

The innovation of financial payment

In the airline industry to taste the benefits of remittances, hoping to continue to complete their own territory expansion. The company's next plan in the insurance, financial and other industries to actively layout, reduce the sales costs of these industries, occupy its payment business leading position. "In fact, compared with the airline ticketing field, we have invested more research and development, capital and manpower in the fund industry, and I think we are doing better in the fund product------------------------------------ Solves the Future Fund sale payment and the settlement bottleneck question, this regardless to the fund industry or pays the profession, is epoch-making. Zhou Ye further stressed.

Past fund sales have relied on bank channels. and the fund direct sales, online direct sales and other business due to a single settlement system, the final all the funds will still be attributed to the bank, which also directly led to the fund in the sale of the company's unparalleled power of speech. However, the situation is expected to change with the approval of the regulatory level approved by the regulator in May this year and allowed to conduct online fund sales and settlement services.

After the business is launched, it is expected that the first taste of the fund will be direct marketing. It also means that fund companies will enter the remittance system later in their own financial sector, rather than entering the banks as they have in the past. This is a supplement to current bank settlement payments, and all systems are now in the process of reckoning and are expected to be officially operational within a few months.

Most of the current payment companies in accordance with customer demand customized payment form. In Zhou Ye's view, if only stay at this level, doomed to be eliminated by the market. is always more than customer demand for more than a step or step, it is remittance compared to domestic and foreign counterparts at the core competitiveness. Weekly remit will hold at least one special meeting on product innovation and market innovation, and each quarter will offer at least one new payment product. This innovative speed and ability is rooted in the culture of remittance, which has injected a lasting impetus into the evergreen.

One of the things that Zhou Ye often does as a founder is to drive innovation, "the payment product is a financial service, it needs to be designed and structured, and it's totally different from it." "Remittance is the first to set up a product center among all payment companies, and many payment companies are still responsible for the products through the IT department."

For now, Chinese payment companies, including Alipay and remit, have been able to match U.S. Visa, MasterCard, Frist Data, PayPal and other companies in online payments, trading volumes and innovation capabilities. China's electronic payment market is second only to the US market, so Zhou Ye is confident of the future of China's payment industry: "I believe we can grow at 2-3 times in the next 5 years." And within 10 years, China will be a world-class payment enterprise, in the customer base, volume, transaction amount and size of the world's top. ”

(This interview is supported by Ceibs)