Image source @ Visual China
Wen丨 Lei Technology leitech
Just entering 2022, the digital yuan pilot has come to a new stage, as the official service platform of the "digital yuan (pilot version)" App has been officially listed on the major Android app markets and Apple App Store since January 4. Users who have not received invitations or participation before can now freely download the app and experience this new thing.
Before you rush to open the app store ready to search and download the Digital Yuan App, I have to remind you that at present, the Digital Yuan is only piloted in the Winter Olympics scene (Beijing, Zhangjiakou) and Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi'an, Qingdao, Dalian, and other regions are not yet registered.
As early as half a year ago, Lei Technology in Beijing made an experience of the digital yuan in advance, and now there must be more questions in the search again: has the registration, recharge, and payment experience been improved? What Internet services can be supported now? Has the relationship between the digital yuan and cash changed? What are the similarities and differences between Alipay and WeChat?
This article will take you to see the digital yuan that has begun to enter more scenarios in society.
The payment experience is much the same as that of common apps
The first is to download, install and register, which is almost the same as the common electronic payment tools, and you can enter the main interface by registering an account through your mobile phone number. It is worth mentioning that at this stage, there is no need for real-name authentication other than the mobile phone number, and users can experience the experience of four types of wallets that are not real names, that is, deposits and payments with the lowest amount restrictions, and cannot be transferred and recharged with bank cards.
Here we will talk about the concept of a wallet for digital yuan, which is roughly equivalent to a wallet that exists in the real world, and each account can have multiple wallets. In the current digital yuan design, the amount of wallet storage relies on the services provided by the bank, so when opening the wallet, the user is prompted to choose the operating agency, and now there are nine banks that provide digital yuan services.
Although the digital yuan is stored in the bank corresponding to the wallet, it does not mean that a new personal account has been opened at the bank, which is still a relatively new concept. Then you can receive and pay, two-dimensional code, NFC, mobile phone number, wallet number can be, if there is no balance in the wallet also want to pay, then you have to bind the bank card to transfer the amount to the wallet, here also need to carry out real-name authentication.
So far, the experience of the digital rmb app is almost the same as that of mainstream electronic payment, and the processes of registration, bank card binding, real-name authentication, and receipt and payment are all familiar. When it came time to pay in digital yuan in Internet services, the concept of a sub-wallet popped up: it was equivalent to creating a new wallet with an inter-payment amount under the existing wallet, but it corresponded to the service one-to-one.
For example, when I choose to pay for takeaway at Meituan, I must first push the sub-wallet to Meituan in the Digital Yuan App, and then I can pay in digital yuan on the payment page. If I have several wallets that have sub-wallets pushed, I can make another fine selection. It may seem a bit complicated, but the advantage is that you can complete the payment even if you don't have a digital yuan app installed on your phone.
According to the official introduction, the sub-wallet design has three advantages: 1, that is, push and use and can choose password-free payment; 2, the user can flexibly adjust the payment limit of the sub-wallet corresponding to the service, do not want to use and cancel the push; 3, will not pass the wallet and personal real-name information to the merchant, to maximize privacy and security, which is also the biggest difference between digital yuan and electronic payment on the surface.
If you want to become mainstream, there are still these difficulties to pass
In the current experience, the digital yuan has achieved two major characteristics: more convenient (no electronic payment app needs to be installed when paying), and more secure (payment account information will not be passed on to the merchant), but in the payment scenarios that we have become commonplace, the digital yuan is only a bright alternative, and it cannot be replaced by mainstream payment tools.
First, payment habits have not yet been established, and users want to pay through digital yuan to "take a long detour".
In the digital yuan app, it is possible to register and bind bank cards like a common payment tool, but it also has to be recharged to have a balance that is enough to pay, and it can be transferred directly from the bank account without binding, and the positioning of M0 (currency in circulation) makes it impossible to pay interest like bank savings, which is unimaginable after people are familiar with bank-focused electronic payments.
Unless there is really a need to improve payment security for the merchant side, it will be difficult for ordinary users to have the motivation to use the "insufficient balance" digital yuan as the main electronic payment method - Internet service payment has evolved to a point that can be paid quickly, and the digital yuan also needs to be recharged or collected to complete payment or transfer.
Second, the integration of the digital yuan with existing electronic payment instruments is limited, and there is also a lack of payment "green channels".
If you open a digital RMB wallet provided by MYbank (Alipay) or WeBank (WeChat Pay) and complete real-name authentication, you will be able to bind the wallet under the Alipay or WeChat Pay account corresponding to the personal information, and the digital RMB portal will also appear in each App, and the user can directly manage the personal wallet under the institution without having to open the Digital RMB App.
As far as the current experience is concerned, it cannot be directly considered that Alipay and WeChat Pay are connected to each other with the digital yuan: only the wallet management interface of the digital yuan App is provided, and the balance of Alipay and WeChat cannot be transferred, or the wallet must be charged from the bound bank account. However, Alipay has a better experience, and it is convenient to bind the bank account number bound to Alipay to the digital yuan wallet.
Third, relying solely on the sub-wallet push mechanism, it cannot cover all Internet services, and there are always dead ends in payment.
In the current publicly downloadable digital RMB App, it can be said that the coverage of various types of Internet services such as e-commerce platforms (Tmall Supermarket, JD.com, Suning Tesco, True Happiness), local life (Ele.me, Meituan, Multipoint), travel services (Didi, Ctrip, Beijing One Card), and living payment (State Grid) can be said to have a wide range of coverage.
But is that enough? The Internet industry can flourish without its free growth environment, and the digital yuan now has to reach a cooperation before it can push sub-wallets to the service, restricting the use of digital yuan to complete the online payment of users. If access is not as fast as mainstream electronic payments, then people can only use limited services, and the willingness to complete payments through them will be affected.
"Electronic payment" is not the true value of the digital yuan
If you look at the positioning of electronic payment tools, the digital yuan app and even the entire concept of digital yuan are somewhat unremarkable. Compared with the WeChat Pay, Alipay and cloud flash payment that the public has long accepted, it lacks fundamental improvements, and it also has more "thresholds" such as sub-wallet push and the inability to directly call bank account payment, which is difficult to impress you and me who have payment habits.
This is actually not what the digital yuan wants to accomplish today, what it really wants to grasp is the "future". In the traditional financial field, money is often linked to the actual value of goods, and money itself also exists and circulates in the form of paper money, coins and other entities, from the chai rice oil and salt in our daily life to the international trade between countries, which are inseparable from the concept of physical currency and its derivatives.
The prosperity of the Internet has made human society undergo earth-shaking changes in the subtle, but as far as the field of payment is concerned, we are familiar with the fact that we do not carry a paper currency, but we can walk in the land of Shenzhou, with the help of electronic payment bound to the value of personal wealth, to complete the required food, clothing, housing or consumption. The value of physical money in life has changed.
The establishment of the value of money in modern times is closely linked to the word trust, and when trust is established, money has a value that is separated from the material. Finally it is the turn of the digital yuan, in simple terms, its existence is to make the renminbi valuable after leaving the entity, so the digital renminbi is the same as the current paper money, enjoying the same rights and value.
As Lei Technology mentioned when talking about the digital yuan before, the balance placed on WeChat Alipay can be traded, but it cannot be completely equivalent to the renminbi, and its value has not left the operation of commercial institutions. But this digital yuan is completely different, it is the renminbi, which is the ultimate guarantee for all Chinese when using electronic payments.
At some point in the future, transactions based on non-physical currencies may become an important part of the world, and people's daily lives may be inseparable from electronic payments driven by digital yuan. By then, we may be able to gain a deeper understanding of what has changed today.