Apple pay temporarily missed China

September 9 (Beijing time September 10 early morning), the United States Cupertino City Deansa College art Performance Flint Center, when Cook said "time to pay, our goal is to replace your wallet" when it should be the protagonist of the iphone 6 and Apple Watch the limelight by Apple Pay (Apple mobile payment) was successfully taken away.

Miles away, China is staying up all night watching Apple's Chenxin (a pseudonym) upsurge, and Apple is finally pushing NFC (near-field payments), and the NFC spring is coming, which makes the chenxin of the three-year mobile payment market extremely exciting.

September 18, Shanghai People's Square of DQ (Snow Queen) New World shop, small often take out the phone, open the micro-letter, the clerk took a scan gun, swept a small often displayed bar code, "drip" of a, a cup of ice cream paid to complete.

Mobile phone manufacturers, telecom operators, internet companies, in the mobile phone as a payment tool in the scene, they all want to occupy the most important seats, to NFC as the representative of the near-field payment and Alipay, micro-letter for the representative of the two-dimensional Code (bar code) payment, all want to lead mobile payment into a new era, but operating for many years, but always difficult to stimulate the market enthusiasm.

Will Apple pay be the outlet for mobile payments? The downside is that Apple Pay has to get a third party licence to enter China, and that foreign companies are not being liberalised, according to the current central bank, which may be one reason why the iphone 6 missed the mainland debut. The good news is that the NFC hardware environment is maturing, more than 3.6 million POS can be used to brush mobile phones nationwide.

Will Apple change the world again this time?

Who dominates? The game of Apple UnionPay

As always, Apple's new product must be about ecosystems. Apple Pay and 11 large U.S. card issuers, McDonald's, the largest U.S. drug chain Walgreen and other retailers will also accept Apple Pay, these companies in the United States, the number of total stores reached 220,000.

Apple and the merchant's mode of cooperation is special, it does not charge the merchant fees, but to the bank charges, according to Apple and the bank, credit card company agreement, if consumers use Apple Pay payment, Apple will be 15 cents per 100 dollar transactions.

But in China, such a pattern is hard to replicate.

Unlike the fierce competition between American banks, UnionPay, which owns China's largest trans-bank settlement system, is uniquely in China, and "If Apple is to charge a fee for UnionPay, UnionPay will not accept it." Apple Pay is unlikely to get a third-party payment license, making it difficult to get into the Chinese market. "A member of the internal analysis of the UnionPay.

In fact, UnionPay has been pushing its own NFC system in the domestic market. From a technical standpoint, NFC is now divided into two main modes, one is the wireless NFC payment that the operator supports, one is similar to Apple, the handset itself supports NFC payment. On both roads, UnionPay has been involved.

UnionPay and Samsung announced a mobile payment service based on security chips at the global launch of Samsung Galaxy Note4 flagship mobile September 3. In addition, UnionPay combined with the promotion of financial IC card, vigorously promote the ' flash pay ' business district construction. At present, the country has more than 3.6 million ' flash ' terminals can brush mobile phones, covering all types of public transport and life service areas. "The above UnionPay insiders told reporters that because mobile, China Telecom and other moving payments are adjusted to be dominated by UnionPay 13.56 NFC payment technology, on the technical level, with NFC-enabled mobile phones can be in the UnionPay with a flashing logo pos machine to complete the card payment. Previously, UnionPay and China Mobile also launched a joint mobile payment platform.

Operator ambitions

There are also telecom operators who want to dominate the industry. The second half of this year, with operators 4G Business online, NFC as a key project to continue to advance. Although the momentum is not large, but from a variety of actions to see, promotion is not small. China Telecom, China Mobile's new 4G mobile phone cards all have NFC payment function. At the same time, in China Telecom sales channels in the top 30 of mobile phone manufacturers, but also to promote the adaptation of NFC payments. "This year, China Telecom Group has cooperated with more than 10 banks to set up an application download platform and a card store to provide different users with the required banks to download applications." ”

In addition, since the beginning of the year, operators in the promotion of mobile payment in the direction of the adjustment. China Telecom, mobile and traffic card departments, through public transport payment to promote its mobile payment model, "compared to the previous business promotion model, simpler." Terminal is a traffic card reader, we only need to increase the corresponding modules in the NFC format to complete the reading card. The Shanghai Telecom Wing pays the relevant personage to introduce.

But in a professional mobile payment industry, it seems, how to let users push merchants to popularize mobile payment is the biggest problem operators. "Operators have to do a better job of mobile payment, hardware, telecom operators need to do chips, mobile phones, and POS terminals match." The first two are fine to solve, but the latter still has a variety of entry difficulties. "Although at present, the POS machine with UnionPay logo can complete the mobile payment of the carrier, but once need to inquire about the function such as the account information related to the operator, it must be equipped with the POS machine with read and write function." So far, the domestic willing to be equipped with such a POS number of merchants not more than hundreds, even the new promotion of traffic Kerak payment business, difficulties are also many, "traffic card recharge inconvenient, can give mobile phone recharge of the recharge dot very little." ”

Payment of wallet, micro-letter payment

"Ferocious" on the site.

While Apple Pay is temporarily unable to have a direct impact on the domestic mobile payment market, for UnionPay and telecoms operators, the long-distance payment model, such as Alipay wallet and micro-credit payments, is the biggest competitor in China to promote NFC.

September 15, Tencent launched a micro-credit card payment, DQ is its first batch of merchants. Previously, Alipay has been with Xisto and other chain convenience stores to launch the same payment model. The payment method that is introduced by internet company is called "long-distance payment" in the industry, need not undertake any hardware transformation, need to collect software support only. Alipay, micro-letter payment and merchant mode of cooperation is to collect payment rates to the merchant. However, according to media reports, in the promotion period, internet companies still use the "pay" model, Alipay not only not to the merchant fees, but also to the agent paid rates. This kind of marketing means, obviously promotion speed is faster than need hardware transformation NFC.

China's E-commerce Research Center monitoring data show: 2013 China's third party mobile payment market volume reached 1.2 trillion yuan, while Alipay, Lakara, Tenpay as the first three strong, the market accounted for more than 90%. Alipay, Tenpay mainly use "two-dimensional code" way to complete payment.

But the biggest hurdle in front of long-distance payments is security. Apple claims that Apple Pay does not store any bank card information. Security experts explained that Apple as a complete third party, only provides a complete set of technology to achieve information transmission, so that even if the phone is lost, because the person who gets the phone does not have the corresponding fingerprint information, also can not steal the money to brush the bank card. However, the two-dimensional code payment method has not been formally released by the central bank, precisely because of its hidden dangers in security, once the phone is lost, or black, capital security can not be fully guaranteed.

Whoever blends first wins.

Will the advent of Apple pay make NFC pay for spring?

Wing pay related person is optimistic about this, he thinks the apple move or will force the merchant to do the mobile payment, "because the Apple user is multitudinous, the merchant may discover that needs the NFC to pay the consumer to be more, may produce the related function pos machine the need." ”

But other experts say NFC will still be a big rain in the short term compared with two-dimensional code payments. "Mobile payments have been a supplement in the payment area, and the proportion of them is currently no more than 3% per cent." "Mobile payment expert Mutchu told reporters that while NFC near-field payments are growing fast, and they belong to pure hardware payments, paying more security, faster, but the industry chain is more complex, the promotion needs the interests of all parties, telecommunications operators, banks, UnionPay, application developers and other Third-party payments are exploring their own interests, No one talks about fusion. Although the cost of two-dimensional code is low, there is no party-led problem, but policy has not been liberalized.

From the perspective of convenience, NFC payment is indeed more convenient than the sweep of two-dimensional code, touch can, and two-dimensional code to sweep, more steps than NFC, whether from the convenience or security, the NFC way to win, now, see who can this chain first fusion.