From the distribution of time-limited digital RMB consumption red envelopes to various specific scenarios such as tax payment and civil servant salary payment, the digital yuan is steadily transitioning from a pilot experiment to a member of the national payment system. Since the beginning of the year, the concept of digital currency has heated up rapidly, the market hot money has actively voted, and more constituent stocks have ushered in the ninth up and down board on January 19.
In the view of industry insiders, the digital yuan has great value in terms of user privacy protection and the promotion of inclusive finance, and under the digital yuan payment scenario, the "role positioning" of existing third-party payment institutions may also change, and financial technology companies will face opportunities and competition at the same time.
Digital RMB from C to B
At the beginning of the new year, the Digital Yuan (pilot version) APP was quietly launched in major app stores and opened to users in the pilot area for download. In the nearly 2 weeks that followed, the number of downloads and installs of digital yuan soared. On a mainstream brand mobile phone application store, Nandu reporter saw that as of now, the number of downloads and installations has reached 8.67 million times.
This move also means the development of online application scenarios for digital yuan. Nandu previously reported that the function of the "sub-wallet" section in the digital yuan APP undertakes to provide users with an entrance to open specific online consumption scenarios. In this section, users can independently authorize the link to the online platform that has been connected to the digital yuan payment method to realize the use of digital yuan for payment when consuming on the specific platform, and also have the right to remove the platform.
Whether online or offline, the retail scene is the mainstream. Nandu reporter combed the "sub-wallet" function of the digital yuan APP and saw that in 50 external link scenarios, including 12 online e-commerce self-operated platforms. According to the research report of one zero research institute on January 12, since the pilot of the digital yuan, application scenarios have continued to penetrate. Each pilot area covers 9 major scenarios such as catering services, shopping consumption, leisure and entertainment. Among them, catering services, shopping consumption and leisure and entertainment are the main offline application scenarios.
In addition to online, digital yuan payments are also expanding to corporate customers on the client side. In Shenzhen, since 2021, various district governments have innovatively carried out pilot work on the use of digital yuan to issue special funds, further realizing the expansion of digital yuan application scenarios from G2C to G2B. By the end of 2021, the relevant departments in Shenzhen have issued a total of 616 million yuan to 2,422 small and micro enterprises, and more than 300,000 merchants have been accepted.
In the eyes of industry insiders, this move may help supply chain finance and solve the problem of financing difficulties and expensive financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, but there is no doubt that the realization of the digital yuan to further expand the scale on the current basis still requires a lot of investment in research and development and infrastructure.
Yu Lingqu, deputy director of the Institute of Finance and Modern Industry of China (Shenzhen) Development Research Institute, believes that the digital yuan can trace the capital footprint, with the spread of payment methods for corporate customers, the future can explore supply chain finance based on digital yuan payment, increase transaction credit for small and medium-sized enterprises, and solve the problem of financing difficulties and expensive financing for small and medium-sized enterprises.
"The company has carried out exploration in the field of supply chain finance scenarios, and the digital yuan can play its advantages and role from the perspective of contracts and payments." Shenzhen Fintech Listed Enterprise Shenzhou Information (000555. SZ) told nandu reporters.
However, the promotion process of the digital yuan still involves the promotion of multiple key links, and Shenzhou Information pointed out that including a large number of infrastructure changes involved in the construction of the digital yuan ecosystem. For example, the use of subway scenes requires support for hardware wallets, which involves the upgrading of subway gates, which is very large for the investment in the entire application. Secondly, the experience of using the digital yuan needs to cultivate user habits.
Internet giants have laid out
Since the scale of the digital yuan pilot has been further expanded, it has received widespread attention from all walks of life, which has led to discussions on the basis of the existing payment system. Some people believe that the most needed digital yuan at present is not ordinary consumers, but retailers who are monopolized by payment acquirers. The view of the merchant group is that through the acquisition of digital yuan, merchants can significantly reduce the cost of transaction fees and obtain more bargaining power with payment institutions.
At present, the third-party institutions in the third-party payment market implement different rate rules, such as WeChat Pay, which occupies nearly 40% of the third-party payment market share, charges a 0.6% handling fee to merchants in most industries and a withdrawal fee of 0.1% to users; the current online payment business fee rate of Wing Pay is 0.45%, and the payment account withdrawal fee is 0; Alipay's "money collection code" withdrawal for merchants is free. According to the research report of the research department of CICC, the current offline scan code rate is generally lower than 0.38%.
Yu Lingqu believes that the digital yuan has a remote payment function and has no handling fee, which can reduce the cost burden of enterprises while enriching the settlement methods of enterprises. With the expansion of digital RMB payment methods, ordinary consumers and retail households will benefit, because retailers save transaction payment fees, and under the conditions of market competition, they will inevitably give profits to consumers, forming a revenue sharing effect.
The continuous expansion of consumption scenarios also means that more and more merchants will access the digital yuan payment system. As of now, the two giants WeChat and Alipay together occupy more than 90% of the third-party mobile payment market share. In addition, relying on the platform ecology, Internet companies including JD.com, Meituan and other Internet companies also hold their own third-party payment licenses.
Although it has formed a competitive relationship with its own payment business, the "love" of Internet companies for the digital yuan is a common commonality, and the cooperation mode of various enterprises is not unrelated to their business ecology.
Tencent is slightly low-key, in April last year, Tencent disclosed the stage progress for the first time, since February 2018, it has been deeply involved in the digital yuan project, participating in design, research and development, operation and other links. In January this year, after the launch of the Digital Yuan (Pilot Version) APP, Alipay and WeChat became operating institutions other than the seven major banks, providing users with digital yuan exchange and circulation services.
Nandu reporter learned from Meituan that Meituan has made efforts in third-party business merchants to support digital yuan transaction solutions, in order to provide more rich local life scenarios for user experience digital yuan payment, and at the same time, let merchants feel the convenience of digital yuan collection. According to its introduction, at present, under the guidance of the Institute of Digital Research, the digital RMB wallet service of bank of China combined with the existing settlement system of Meituan has achieved a breakthrough in the ability of full-scenario digital RMB transaction settlement. At present, Meituan has supported meituan takeaway, meituan grocery shopping, meituan bicycle, meituan group purchase and other business types of digital yuan transactions, users in the Meituan App, Meituan takeaway App, Dianping App can use the experience.
On January 7, JD.com announced that it has also realized the access of third-party merchants to the digital yuan system, becoming the first batch of enterprises in the country to support the use of digital yuan by self-operated + third-party merchants, further enriching the pilot application scenarios of digital yuan in the JD ecosystem.
"In the context of digital yuan payment, the "role positioning" of existing third-party payment institutions may also change," Yu Lingqu said, for example, by providing value-added services to merchants and embedding consumption preferential schemes to help the circulation of digital yuan. It believes that the current situation of free basic services in the digital yuan may become the norm, and value-added services can be charged according to the service effect. Just as the issuance and circulation of existing banknotes is a basic financial activity of the state, which is completely borne by public finances, and the advertising fees and commissions can be charged to pull guests to merchants for consumption, the future service agencies can embed more functions according to the programmability of the digital yuan to correlate the benefits and form a positive incentive mechanism.
The enthusiasm for market investment is hard to hide
On January 19, the digital yuan concept stock Cuiwei (603123. SH) rose again, ushering in the 9th limit board in the past 12 trading days. The Flush Digital Currency Index (885866) has risen by 18.67% this year, ranking second in the concept sector. On January 19, 25 of the 44 constituent stocks involved in the index were red, and 4 stocks such as Cuiwei shares and Shenzhou Information rose more than 5%.
Unlike Internet companies participating in the payment system, most fintech companies are involved in the construction of the digital yuan system.
"Shenzhou Information is a technology provider, mainly to help banks build related systems, including the construction of scenarios." Shenzhou Information introduced to the Nandu reporter that at present, Shenzhou Information has participated in the construction of digital RMB wallets of more than 20 banks to help banks build a digital RMB payment and settlement system. At the same time, it also combines some existing group scenarios and bank application scenarios to do innovation.
Although fintech companies are deeply involved in the construction of the digital yuan system, there is still a long way to go from achieving business profitability, and the market is still difficult to hide its enthusiasm for investment opportunities in the digital currency sector.
When harvesting the ninth up and down board, Cuiwei co., Ltd. responded to the outside world that the digital yuan business had no significant impact on the company's revenue structure and performance. Shenzhou Information also said that at present, most of the company's digital yuan related business is still in the stage of research and development investment.
Zhao Guangbin, senior economist at PwC China, believes that the digital yuan fundamentally digitizes currencies, which opens up the last mile for fintech companies to use big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and even the Internet of Things to link and process this data. It is expected that China's financial technology field, which is already in the world's leading field, will usher in a new historical development opportunity after the official launch of the digital yuan.
"The market competition for the construction of the digital yuan system is very fierce, and the key market competition in the future lies in the construction of wallets and scenes." Shenzhou Information believes that at present, most of the company's digital yuan related business is still in the stage of research and development investment, and the promotion process of digital yuan involves the promotion of multiple key links. From the perspective of digital yuan-related industries, fintech service providers will get more opportunities. In addition, in terms of hardware manufacturers, the support for hardware wallets and chips also provides space for hardware equipment manufacturers to play.
Written by: Nandu reporter Ye Linfang