US Ikea favors mobile payment, farewell to traditional cash troubles

The United States and better from Dongguan, all over the Pearl River Delta, with more than 6,000 stores, known as the country's largest chain of convenience stores. Some time ago, Alipay and bless the station to launch a mobile phone payment, the next 7-11 will follow up, plus the previous hi-many, mobile payment is fully launched in the convenience store this market. Although most people are unfamiliar with the online payment, it is already an indisputable fact that they have entered the commercial field.

Some people may wonder why convenience stores do not use cash to deal with such small transactions, but also the complex and complex payment methods? Even some people think that using mobile phone to pay is blindly chasing fashion trends.

Cash payments, pain, but no need

The reason for trying to pay for electronic payments is simple, and cash payments seem to be simple. If the conversion rate, cash payments as a means of payment is actually not lower than the current market all the electronic means of payment, it seems, and most of the common sense has a big difference, why?

1 Cashier cashier work with counterfeit currency risk, even if repeatedly careful, but the market on the emergence of counterfeit money, people are impossible to guard against.

2 The store's cash business funds have custody risk. Don't laugh, the risk of a convenience store being robbed is always there.

3 The repeated change action to make the cashier tired, the shop chief also need to go to the bank every day to line up deposits

4 in order to change, store to prepare a large number of changes, but the bank provided to store the change is limited, had to go to market stalls and other places to exchange zero money

The things behind the cashier, in fact, cost us a lot of energy, if the amortization on each payment, the cost is very high, the reason for cash payments or mainstream, in fact, mainly for the customer's payment habits.

All kinds of cards, all kinds of annoying

Instead of cash, all kinds of physical cards are trying, but to be honest, convenience stores are not very beneficial.

1 Bank card: The United States and the best 5,600 convenience stores, 80% of the stores installed UnionPay POS cash register.

Brush bank card Consumption is very popular, but unfortunately, this is not our food, very simple, we are characterized by low customer price small payment, the user does not have power card, after all, the card is slower, a commodity scanning machine to cash payment change process in 30 seconds, and the credit card transmission code signature and check the signature of the whole process to more than 1 minutes, large , we have endured, small, a few people are willing, and we do not want to view the cash register long queues, reduce the efficiency of store operations.

2) UnionPay Flash Pay: 2012, the major banks are promoting the "flash pay", the United States and all POS machines to accept flash payment.

Credit card efficiency is low, UnionPay also know, so flash pay for this pain point, this is a non-contact IC chip card, chip card loaded with electronic cash account, users do not have to lose the password swing can consume. This is very suitable for small payments to the fast request, but the card holders of chip cards really really too little! and chip card electronic Cash account also need to bank outlets to recharge, very inconvenient. So a small percentage of customers use the Flash function.

3 City Card: The beauty of the Shenzhen region has 800 stores can use "Shenzhen Tong".

The benchmark of the city card is Hong Kong's octopus, we in Shenzhen, Shenzhen Tong effect is also very good, to provide recharge services, to accept consumption, is very popular with stores and customers. Unfortunately, the city of a card needs to lay a dedicated reading and writing equipment, in the use of the area received the restrictions, after all, not every city has such a developed city card.

NFC, it's really not here yet.

Mobile phone, this is the real card after the second thing to challenge cash. When it comes to mobile payment, the hottest one is Alipay, but in fact, the first contact is moving.

As early as 2007, moved to find us, showing the mobile phone wallet, in the mobile phone lane a chip, and then you can through the backend system to realize the function of the member store value consumption. 2009, they began to vigorously promote the NFC business, however, in the selection of 13.56GHZ and 2.4GHZ technical standards of the operators and UnionPay repeatedly swing, resulting in slow business promotion, we naturally can only choose to wait and watch the change.

To be honest, China Mobile has made a lot of efforts to realize mobile payment, and in 2010, he invested in the Pudong bank, and in 2011 applied for a third party payment licence. By 2012 with the Wireless City Project mobile phone Treasure Project, the purpose is to create a city card, Dongguan Mobile has been with the United States and better to negotiate, and the project system docking development, but for a variety of reasons, the item is not yet a smooth online.

In fact, in addition to cooperation with operators, in fact, we have also tried to pay the mobile phone, in May 2009, based on the needs of member storage value, we have developed a mobile phone message based on the code consumption of mobile phone wallet "Mei Yi Bao", the customer to the store reported mobile phone number, with the text However, with the adjustment of membership system, and the national policy of single use prepaid card, June 2013, the United States and good Jia terminated the business.

Hitchhiking Alipay

As previously said, in lieu of cash on the road, we have a lot of exploration, but also hit a lot, but in any case, this effort we continue, and now with us, is Alipay, so far, this is really the most confident one of the way to replace the cash.

Last December 23, the United States and Ikea became the first on-line payment of the wallet bar code to pay the convenience store chain, the user opened Alipay Wallet client, light out the bar code, the clerk with a scan gun sweep, complete payment.

Why willing and Alipay cooperation, of course, not covet each other's fame, after all, we are businessmen, is to see the cost of income. In fact, this cooperation, one of the points that touched us is that there is no cost.

Previously said that the replacement of cash, for stores, to add some hardware, the United States and 5,600 stores, all over Guangdong cities, in fact, involves hardware changes, or very troublesome. Pay treasure This bar code to pay, good fortunately do not need to add hardware, sweep code gun we have, the cashier checkout when scanning goods are used.

So all we do is make small software changes on the cashier system. Basically, the change is also very simple, we received from the beginning of the completion of two weeks time. Rates, now in the promotion period, or free, the internet giant is now online under the horse racing enclosure, at the cost of business, for businesses, this cheap does not account for the white, in the future, even if the charge rate, I believe also can not be higher than UnionPay.

In terms of earnings, there's no need for change in this way, do not need to sign, cashier efficiency can be increased by one times, there is a lot of people ignore is that this is real-time to the account, than UnionPay card payment t+1 to the account is also faster, in fact, to improve the store to the headquarters of the cash collection efficiency is also a must not overlook the benefits.

Where is the difficulty?

Said and Alipay cooperation of many benefits, there is no difficulty? Of course, if unimpeded, the bar code payment on the instant was detonated, but we operate one months of data is, the number of successful daily trading pen more than 10,000, growth is really fast, but if spread to more than 5,000 stores, this figure is still very small. In fact, the push at both ends of the client and store side is not a simple thing:

1 Consumer this end, although the Guangdong region Alipay Wallet customers have 13 million, but there are still many people do not install, this also needs to pay treasure efforts.

2 installed, but also to use, bar code payment in the Alipay purse in the entrance position is not as good as the balance treasure, transfer these are so significant, coupled with a relatively new, so to awaken users to this function of the understanding, but also need a short education process, and, this process also to overcome users of mobile phone payment security anxiety. Theoretically, every user in the payment of the bar code is ready, then the cashier process will be very fast, but if we are not too good to use, wait until the cashier to open Alipay app, find the bar code where, but will slow down the cashier speed.

3 store end, internet access offline, dot literacy is actually a difficult point, as if we each store two cashier, on more than 10,000 people, it is not easy for them to touch such fashionable new things.

To be honest, our goal is not just to pay, but for the internet, we have a lot of expectations for traditional businesses, including big data, precision marketing, O2O, and so on that internet people often talk about. We're paying the public number in the Treasure app two weeks for 400,000 fans, in here we also tried to find nearby stores, play points and other functions, if you can build a sound membership system on this basis, analysis of consumption habits, do precision marketing, optimize commodity inventory and supply chain, it is certainly very good.

But we do the entity, very clear status quo, Gao is useless, for convenience stores, if the payment is not active, behind all sorts of is empty talk. So next, we will try a more powerful store promotion, such as using Alipay bar code to pay can enjoy a specific discount category, to increase the user's ability to use this power.

Traditional merchants face the Internet, should not be afraid, we look forward to the Internet, the Internet is also more and more attention to the strength of the physical network. Offline dot power in the past is underestimated and buried, the future of the convenience store will actually be "community Service Center" path, we now have mobile phone recharge, coal generation and payment, ticket booking, day cat parcel collection, etc. more than 20 kinds of convenient services.

So, back to mobile payment, pay the Bora attack line, we have to use good stores, electronic payments relative to cash payments and physical card payment, there are many comprehensive advantages, this is the fact, and now, technology and commercial barriers have been through, and the rest is that everyone joined forces to popularize it.