EBao payment: the dream of Xiami in the industry

Compared with Alipay, which is backed by 0.34 billion Tencent's active users and more than 80 million registered users, eBao payment looks like Xiami in the electronic payment industry.

However, during the donation promotion in the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, eBao payment suddenly became a first-line e-payment company. The fund-raising fortune 23 million, Alipay 20 million, and eBao 18.5 million have become one of the three largest donation websites in China.

The accumulation of these resources comes from the "hard work" of the "small shrimp ".

Over the past five years, eBao has worked hard to build the "e-payment industry highway"-providing comprehensive payment solutions from rice, oil and salt to air ticket shopping. Its annual transaction volume is growing at a rate of 5 to 6 times, and the industry is growing at a rate of 2 times. At the end of, Yibao paid nearly million yuan in revenue, and it began to make a historic profit.

According to Yiguan International's data for third-party markets by the end of 2008, Alipay's market share was 58.1%, and Caifu 17.3%, although Yibao paid about 1%, however, the ability to integrate industry-wide resources reflected in donations raised in the Wenchuan earthquake is no inferior to that of the first two.

In other words, the goal of Yibao "all-round athletes" begins to become specific. EBao's payment methods cover gateways, mobile phones, and telephone payments; B2B, B2C, and C2C business models; and non-bank system cards such as bank cards, pre-payment cards, and shenzhouhang; in the direction of capital flow, it not only helps sellers collect money, but also helps them make money in batches ......

"We are the first company to launch a comprehensive payment platform ." Yu Chen, vice president of eBao payment, said.

Comprehensive payment platform?

Yibao payment is currently focused on one thing, that is, to build a full-industry payment solution until the various joints get through.

"The core of a payment company is to rely on transaction service fees. This is a economies of scale. Just like the highway, you can't take it back tomorrow ."

But this is not the idea of the company's founder Tang Bin and Yu Chen.

In 2003, Tang Bin, a member of the Silicon Valley Wireless Technology Association, and Yu Chen, a member of the organization, visited the country. On the way, Tang Bin found that there was a lot of inconvenience in domestic payment, and often had to "get up in the middle of the night to buy a mobile phone Prepaid Card ".

Both of them are technical and have conceived various Internet entrepreneurship directions, but at last they found that e-payment opportunities were the greatest.

In the United States, PayPal, the payment company that made Max Levchin famous, became a digital payment model after being acquired by eBay. "This is just the tip of the iceberg ."

There are also many payment companies that are unknown in China, such as First Data, which earned $2007 in revenue in 8.1 billion and established its First Data center in Shanghai in 2002. For example, another Nasdaq-listed company, Cybersource, has already entered China and signed a cooperation agreement with the third-party payment platform Shouxin payment Yi company.

The inspiration from these example companies that have made electronic payment a great deal is that electronic payment is a multi-channel payment platform, rather than just a PayPal, and it has a huge extension space. China's payment market is far from satisfying, and the gap between demand and supply is a startup opportunity.

Existing competitors such as Alipay and Tenpay have been forced to find a differentiated path for eBao payment.

Alipay and Tenpay have a huge user platform, which makes it impossible for Alipay to gain a comparative user advantage in a single field. However, the bottleneck of the former is that Alipay and Tenpay cannot become an independent third-party payment, which is the advantage of Yibao payment.

Like the overseas payment industry, which has been deeply developed in the aviation field, eBao initially thought that "it is a single-point product, not an overall solution ."

However, with the evolution of the market, Tang Bin and Yu Chen realized that although they can quickly make profits in some networks and aviation fields, only targeted solutions in multiple industries can truly occupy the market.

There are two reasons behind this. First, the real economies of scale can be established only through in-depth integration with multiple industries.

On the one hand, at the back end of eBao payment, there is a huge amount of merchant data in various industries. If the two complement each other, eBao payment can help sellers to cross-sell through the database to create wealth. On the other hand, although the Bank cooperates with a number of payment institutions, the cooperation is also different.

"Does a bank treat you as a channel provider or a solution provider? It is the front-end of business expansion or a real partner ", which is very different. A solution provider can obtain the payment interfaces that other payment companies cannot obtain to carry out more professional services.

Second, when some industries enter the cyclical underestimation, Yibao payment still has a profit point that increases against the trend. In 2008, due to the financial crisis, the transaction volume of tourism and aviation payment declined sharply. Yibao paid for the first loss of a 15-year-old airline customer, but Yibao paid for digital entertainment.

Therefore, starting from basic payment, eBao gradually tries to build an ecosystem of the industrial chain and gradually transits to "industry-wide payment experts ". In addition to the establishment of an all-in-one comprehensive solution in terms of payment methods, sales models, and payment tools, eBao is also exploring the key fields of several industries, these include aviation, games, online shopping, digital games, and education.

The idea of Yibao payment's entry into the industry follows the order in which credit cards enter the lives of ordinary people, from catering, hotels, travel to department stores.

But there are also exceptions.

B2C shopping in China is not the most active part in the imagination of electronic payment. Most people still like to use "cash on delivery", especially for enterprises with logistics system support such as Dangdang. Cash on delivery is not just a process of payment, it is also a verification process.

On the contrary, in C2C, small merchants without logistics capabilities, digital entertainment products without actual logistics, and aviation fields with electronic tickets unified throughout the world have huge demands for electronic payment.

The coverage of these markets can help eBao to build a more complete integrated platform, and also bring about a large volume of transactions, which is crucial for companies that rely on transaction rates to survive.

Win the game and your opponent

"What we rely on in this industry is not a change in the overall economy, but an increase from offline to online, because China's e-payment is too low ." Said Yu Chen. Even in a period of economic downturn, Yu Chen is optimistic that this increment is stable.

Yu Chen told reporters that the transaction volume of e-payment in 2007 was 100 billion, 2008 in 278 billion, and the industry saw a 180% growth. Therefore, if a payment company only grows by 200%, this score can only be unsatisfactory.

When players in all industries grow by at least 200%, the race in this industry has become the catch-up between many players in both professionalism and scale. To a professional level, both Huifu and Yibao payment can be connected with airlines and air ticket agent systems, and the profits of agents at all levels from receipt to credit and distribution can all be in place, this is a professional service that Alipay and Caifu Tong cannot provide.

This kind of professional refinement capabilities once made eBao to exclusively win the Unicom bill.

Last year, China Unicom began to integrate all electronic channels, such as online business offices and electronic channels, with fewer outlets than China Mobile. In order to enhance its competitiveness, an e-payment enterprise needed support. Many enterprises, including eBao payment and Alipay, are bidding for the bid, and eBao payment, which is "unknown", won the bid.

The killer is that eBao has customized the telecom solution for this. After the charges are collected, this solution can manage the capital flow for the Unicom branch one by one.

Among professional payment companies, eBao's competitive advantage lies in providing a variety of solutions. "Only one aviation industry is available, and other industries may not. We focus on major industries with dedicated solutions ."

However, although Yibao's payment model has a clear positioning concept, it still takes time to prove whether short-term profits can continue or what will happen in the future.

Tang Bin once said on a public occasion that the electronic payment market "from 2005 ~ The year is a development phase from the beginning; the year to the year ~ In 2008, it was a period of rapid development and maturity from the beginning ". This step should jump from profit to profit for e-payment companies, and will start to make profits in 2008 ."

Yi Guan International analyst Cao Fei told reporters that the overall e-payment industry is not profitable so far, a few such as Huanxun 1 PS, Shouxin Yi payment and so on have little profit.

However, Mu Haijie, senior vice president of Huifu World, told reporters that Huifu world is also "just entering the profit period ".

The reason is that various companies are currently focusing on online payment, such as online games and shopping. Online transactions are growing very fast, and all of them are busy with "land sharing" and are not eager to make profits, we are still patiently cultivating the market. The achievement of scale profit should be achieved after the customer's market is basically stable.

At present, the strategies of various companies are similar-"trying to spend money" to cultivate the market, rather than looking at the immediate benefits. This shows that the transaction volume of each player is constantly increasing in multiples.

Guan Guoguang, CEO of quickmoney, said that the overall transaction volume of quickmoney reached about 2008 in 32 billion, and the growth rate in recent years was at least 4 times higher.

He believes that the turning point of profitability depends on the scale and service differences.

Guan Guoguang also pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of all-round contestants. As the market opportunities are large enough, any industry's fingers can contribute a lot to its scale. But on the other hand, this mode lacks accumulation in its core advantages.

Other competitors are constantly improving their business. Mu Haijie told reporters that Huifu, which has the best advantage in the aviation B2B field, is also trying to develop towards online games, although it is still only a small role at present.

"We hope to enter the top three categories as soon as possible ." Mu Haijie also raised challenges to the current situation.

This kind of effort may break the top three rankings of Alipay, Tenpay, and ChinaPay in the future.

"The role of an independent third party is becoming more and more important. History tells us that first-mover competition may not necessarily win. It depends on your pace of innovation ." Guan Guoguang said.

"This is a cumulative process ." Xu Chen pointed out that e-payment cannot be as explosive as Kaixin.com. This is not a "big-ups and downs", but a highway. "Once this mode is established, when you go to bed, money will also come in."