UnionPay accelerates mobile payment, who will spend the mainstream of mobile payments?

Ali and Tencent push two-dimensional code sweep code has been paid for a long while, covering shopping malls, restaurants, shops and other offline scenes. Last month, they also launched virtual credit cards. However, the central bank immediately issued a ban on the existence of security concerns, the suspension of Alipay, Tencent's virtual credit card products and two-dimensional code payment services. The central bank's move has poured cold water on the market's head and investors ' confidence has been severely frustrated. At that time, the analysis said, Alipay, micro-letter two-dimensional code sweep code to pay the move UnionPay's cheese, disrupted UnionPay's payment system, inconvenient to regulate.

Recently, UnionPay said it will push its mobile payment platform "Flash", and announced progress: As at the end of the first quarter of 2014, the national "Flash pay" terminal POS machine has nearly 3 million units, can support the financial IC card and NFC mobile phone payments; UnionPay is in the joint Third-party payment agencies to carry out the online POS machine transformation, and subsidies; , UnionPay is exploring the market in cooperation with mobile, but there is no substantive content; In connection with the bank, UnionPay also talks in one place, and there are about 50 banks working with it to carry out the mobile payment business.

In fact, UnionPay started experimenting with NFC payments as early as a few years ago, hoping to replicate the success of NFC in Japan, but the promotion has been less than ideal. Wang Potao, deputy general manager of the Innovation and promotion Department of UnionPay, said the biggest obstacle to NFC propulsion came from cost and application scenario building. For now, the cost comes mainly from two sources, NFC chips and terminal devices.

It is reported that the price of NFC chips from the 06 3~~5 euro (about 30~50 yuan) has been reduced to less than 5 U.S. dollars (about 30 yuan). In the laying of terminal equipment, UnionPay is a joint third-party payment agencies "Sequoia" and "pay" for the online POS machine transformation, so that it supports UnionPay's "flash" mode, the current transformation of a POS machine costs for the 300~500 yuan, the Bank of the Federation to subsidize.

According to the analysis of knowledge, NFC technology in the domestic promotion of the main obstacles in the following areas:

One, the most lucrative near-field payment field in the NFC industry chain, there is a game of interest between UnionPay, the three operators, handset makers, software developers, and third party payers, the main contenders, both of which are reluctant to give up the dominance of NFC technology before UnionPay and telecoms operators.

Second, the infrastructure for NFC payments is imperfect. NFC is the same as our usual bus cards and other inductive cards, are passive activated and need to be equipped with terminal devices to activate NFC chips, but for small businesses, any changes are an increase in existing management costs, maintenance costs and capital costs, coupled with a low level of consumer acceptance of NFC payments, Businesses are not willing to buy NFC terminal pos machines.

Third, NFC for mobile phone hardware requirements are relatively high, and now China is probably only 3000~5000 high-end Android phone support, mainly Samsung, Sony and so on.

According to a study by Gartner, the US market research firm, the global mobile payment volume continued to grow at a high rate in 2013, while NFC payment technology accounted for only 2% of the turnover, and in China, 2012 near-field payments accounted for only 2.6% of the total mobile payment transactions.

Technology has its pros and cons. NFC Near-field payments are based on physical carriers and have hardware encryption, which is more secure than two-dimensional code generated by software. But two-dimensional code to pay the use of the threshold is not as high as NFC, for businesses, the cost is lower, for consumers to use is also convenient. Ali Small micro-finance Group vice president, chief risk officer Hu Xiaoming recently revealed that the central bank's attitude to the two-dimensional code is supported, and the Ministry of Planning and Development, improve the two-dimensional code payment standards, but this standard is not too fast.

Don't know which technology will become the mainstream of future mobile payments, but for the new things, would like to be understood, recognized, willing to advance the two-dimensional code to pay the Internet companies have a say, but also willing to business and consumer voice to be heard.