Recently, the WeChat fee collection incident has continued to ferment, causing widespread attention and heated discussions among netizens.
First, let's sort out the course of events.
It is reported that on June 29, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Sichuan University for Nationalities, Zhoukou Normal College, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Northwest University and other universities successively issued notices to suspend the WeChat scan code payment service for on-campus card users from July 1. The specific reason is that WeChat has carried out refined management and charged a handling fee of 0.6% for some businesses.
In response to this matter, Tencent responded immediately:
Recently, WeChat Pay has launched merchant communication for the refined management of campus industry rates, and after collecting opinions and feedback in the early stage, it is planned to continue to provide services at preferential rates lower than the market average for only a small part of for-profit scenarios such as e-commerce and wine tourism.
Subsequently, Tencent issued a relevant apology letter:
Due to our poor handling of the payment rate problem of college life service scenarios, which caused everyone's trouble, we would like to apologize to the majority of schools, teachers and students. Please rest assured that in the campus non-profit scenario, we will continue to maintain a zero-rate preferential policy.
The original intention of this adjustment is to implement more refined preferential measures for the rate, but it is obviously too simple and crude to cause misunderstanding, we apologize and immediately correct, and we will continue to optimize the communication process with universities, strengthen cooperation, and help the sustainable development of campus digitalization.
On June 30, in response to the doubts of many netizens, Tencent responded again:
First, the reason for the fee is that some profit scenarios such as e-commerce and wine hotels crowd out zero-rate education subsidy resources, resulting in increasing channel and operating costs, so the rate of campus profit-making scenarios is carefully managed.
Second, the fee rate is actually 0.2%, not the 0.6% circulated online. Among them, WeChat Pay actually charges a rate of .01%, and the other 0.1 is issued to partners.
Third, the preferential policy of zero rate will continue to be implemented for the life service scenarios involved in this adjustment. At the same time, the technical service fee of 0.1% will continue to be provided to partners.
Second, there are a few key issues to understand about this incident.
First, why does Tencent charge.
Judging from the official notice, the reason for the fee is that many for-profit activities crowd out free educational resources, resulting in a rapid increase in operating costs, causing a great economic burden to enterprises, and the annual expenditure of channel fees is as high as 1 billion yuan. This is not counting the technical service fees paid to partners.
It has to be said that Tencent is neither a charity nor a public institution, as an enterprise, its essence is to make profits. How can a business survive if it is not profitable? Since you enjoy the service, shouldn't you pay? How many people pay sky-high membership fees every year, why is no one protesting?
To put it bluntly, Tencent is equivalent to pouring money to do free services for education, and it is understandable to charge beyond the scope of the policy. It's the same as our withdrawal fee.
Second, what is the meme of the passage fee.
In this incident, there is a word that is very frequent: channel fees. The so-called channel fee is the technical service fee for access to the banking system.
According to the current technical system, the interconnection of data is basically through the way of interfaces. If you want to adopt interfaces, then data and services are involved.
Data is naturally provided by banks, and services are basically providers that provide services for banks, that is, information service enterprises, and if they want to call other people's interfaces, they naturally have to pay.
To put it bluntly, the channel fee is the fee paid to the bank for the use of data and services.
Third, why only charge for e-commerce and wine tourism.
For schools, they belong to public institutions and cannot carry out so-called commercial activities according to regulations. Then, in order to generate revenue, certain operations must be entrusted to third-party companies. E-commerce and wine hotels are third-party companies entrusted by the school.
Compared with schools, Tencent is obviously not obliged to provide free services to third-party profitable enterprises. In addition, for commercial payment scenarios, Tencent's cost will obviously increase significantly in addition to the bank's channel fee, but also the channel fee of the industry and commerce, tax and other departments.
At the same time, due to the large transaction amount and high concurrent volume of e-commerce and wine hotels, the human, material and financial resources required have increased exponentially. It has caused a great financial burden to Tencent.
For Tencent, it was originally intended to separate the for-profit scene from the non-profit scene, but it was not thought that there was an intersection between many school scenes, and it was impossible to completely separate, which is also the main reason for the current embarrassment.
Fourth, how high are the operating costs?
According to the notice issued by Tencent, the cost mainly includes channel fees and operating expenses. Operating expenses include their own operating expenses and service fees paid to partners.
It is reported that at present, Tencent Pay's operation team is about 5,000 people, plus relevant partners, and only 50,000 human resources have been invested. The education industry is calculated according to the input of 10,000 people, and the annual labor expenditure is as high as 3 billion yuan according to the labor expenditure standard of 300,000 yuan per person, plus various equipment costs, material costs, communication costs, transportation costs, travel expenses, taxes, management fees, etc., and the conservative estimated cost exceeds 3.5 billion yuan.
Such a high amount of investment, even for Tencent's hundreds of billions of profits, is a big expense. There is clearly no need for any accusations at reasonable charges.
Fifth, only a very small number of schools have spoken out.
According to big data statistics, as of May 31, 2022, the number of colleges and universities in mainland China was 2,759. Apparently, less than one per cent of the total number of schools currently issuing circulars.
So why are only these few schools speaking out?
According to the notice issued by Tencent, only 0.2% rate is currently charged for e-commerce and wine hotels. Obviously, these schools have a high probability of more e-commerce, wine and tourism business, and the transaction volume is relatively large, even if the fee below the market price is a big loss for the school that originally has few income channels.
According to the current situation, Tencent is obviously formulating a more refined management plan, no longer engaging in one-size-fits-all, but further refining the business, charging according to the business, not according to the scenario.
It has to be said that although Tencent's fees are reasonable, they do not reflect Chinese characteristics at the operational level, and such a one-size-fits-all approach is obviously not feasible at present.
Finally, let's take a look at who is maliciously hyping the Tencent charging incident, which boils down to two main types of people.
First, bad self-media. After this incident, self-media people represented by Sima Nan, Liu Xuesong and other big Vs made sharp criticisms of Tencent's charging behavior, which invisibly broke the rhythm and caused great negative emotions and public opinion guidance. Sima Nan also criticized Hu Xijin and Thin Mu in the program, believing that Tencent's charging cannot be left alone, and also advocated that Tencent should compensate merchants for losses.
It's funny to see such remarks. There is no such thing as a free lunch, shouldn't you be paid for someone else's services? Should opportunism be punished for crowding out public resources?
At the same time, many bad self-media also followed the trend to carry out malicious hype, exaggerate the facts, mislead the public, and even compare Tencent to a monopoly enterprise, promoting Tencent as a spy.
Seeing these remarks feels speechless, although the proportion of WeChat Pay is high, it has by no means reached the point of monopoly. In addition, some people always fall in love with the program, and when a problem arises, they always think of spies, how can there be so many spies?
The second is indignation. After this incident, the angry young people were also unusually active. Many people have made a lot of noise about this, maliciously hyping it, advocating that Tencent has begun to attack students, that WeChat Pay should be canceled, and that the state should launch an anti-monopoly investigation against Tencent.
Obviously, Tencent does not charge students, but only for e-commerce and wine and hotel merchants, which is beyond doubt. In addition, Tencent has obviously not yet reached a monopoly position in the payment field, and the state will not conduct anti-monopoly investigations.
I have to say that the reason why many people are so painful about Tencent must be sour grape psychology.
Finally, for the matter of Tencent's charging, we still have to look at it rationally. Charging fees is not the first of Tencent's initiative, nor is it just starting now, so there is no need to maliciously hype about it.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.