Manuscript|Mr. Thirteen
Edit|light rain
preface
Recently, Northwestern University issued a statement on its official website, announcing that it would temporarily stop using WeChat Pay within the scope of campus payment.
Since then, a number of colleges and universities have issued similar announcements to stop using WeChat Pay in schools.
If only one university makes such a statement, it is like a pebble thrown into the sea, and it cannot stir up too many waves.
Now, multiple universities have issued similar decisions, which has to be noted.
Seeing this, everyone must have questions about this, what has WeChat done to make multiple universities jointly stop WeChat Pay?
Disputes arise
A few days ago, Tencent suddenly issued a decision that from July 1, 2023, it will charge a 0.6% handling fee for other payment scenarios in colleges and universities other than tuition fees.
Once the decision was announced, a number of universities expressed strong opposition to it and announced that they would no longer use WeChat Pay on campus.
Subsequently, the discussion about "WeChat Pay fee increase" was also put on the hot spot, and people's attention focused on: this time, is the handling fee charged by WeChat Pay too high?
According to Tencent's newly released decision, every expenditure using the WeChat Pay platform in universities is charged a handling fee of 0.6%.
That is to say, if the single payment is 1,000 yuan, then 6 yuan will be charged as a handling fee to enter the account of Tencent, and if the transaction amount reaches 10,000, the handling fee is 60 yuan.
In 2002, the number of colleges and universities in mainland China was 2,688, of which the number of higher education students reached 40.02 million.
According to Tencent's decision, every student will charge a handling fee when using WeChat Pay in school, then this will be a very huge profit, it can be said that this profit is almost a white.
Netizens said that Tencent really played a good white wolf drama with empty gloves.
Of course, Tencent can issue a decision to increase the price and charge a payment fee, and then universities can also choose not to use WeChat Pay, so many universities, including Northwest University, have issued decisions to stop using WeChat Pay and recharge on campus.
At the same time, statements from Tencent and major universities have sparked discussion online, with most people opposing Tencent's decision.
Tencent's business covers a wide range of areas, but the number of people using WeChat Pay on the mainland is even large, especially young college students.
This move was first resisted by universities, and then most students expressed understanding and support for the university's decision to oppose WeChat Pay's increase in fees.
Youth is the main force of national development, but also the largest number of people using the Internet, if this trend is allowed to develop, if the loss of college students this huge group of customers, then for the WeChat payment platform, the loss will be very huge.
After that, in order to calm public opinion. Also in order to save the use of customers, WeChat Pay issued a statement and apologized on the official Weibo. They said that they had something wrong in the handling of the incident and were willing to correct their mistakes.
At the same time, he also emphasized that WeChat has been providing preferential policies with zero handling fees for non-profit scenarios such as schools, and this policy has lasted for eight years.
With the sharp rise in the number of Internet users, this policy has cost WeChat nearly a billion yuan, which is why the latest decision to charge a 0.6% fee has been made.
The increase in fees is outraging
Today, more and more people choose to pay for money through the Internet, paper money has gradually faded out of people's sight, the use of mobile phone payment for currency transactions is an indispensable payment method in the mainland.
The WeChat app is owned by Tencent, an application software mainly used for social activities and sending text messages and image messages for free.
By mid-2016, WeChat's coverage of smartphone users had reached an astonishing 94%, and with the continuous increase in the use of this software, more and more functions developed by WeChat's main creative team were also used.
Among them, WeChat Pay is the most convenient payment method for people.
Why not download a piece of software that connects with others on the Internet and uses it to make monetary payments?
At the beginning of the establishment of WeChat Pay, before smartphones were as popular as today, people still had concerns about electronic online payment, and felt that transfers through virtual banks were very unreliable.
In order to increase the number of users and attract users, WeChat Pay promises to the public not to charge intermediate fees for monetary payments, and also takes a series of measures to protect the safety of users' property, reduce people's concerns about using WeChat virtual payment, and greatly popularize the use of WeChat Pay by Internet users.
After that, it may be that Tencent believes that the user group of WeChat users has reached a certain limit, so it decided that from March 1, 2016, the cumulative free withdrawal amount of each user's WeChat Pay platform is 1,000 yuan, and a fee of 0.1% will be charged if it exceeds this limit.
At the time, not many people disputed this decision. Because in the eyes of most people, the 0.1% handling fee is a drop in the bucket of their assets, since they use WeChat Pay to facilitate their lives, it is also feasible to pay a small fee to Tencent.
There are many people who think this way. This also fueled Tencent's desire to "harvest leeks".
After WeChat reflected the need to pay fees, Tencent chose to "test the waters" in colleges and universities first, trying to quietly increase the handling fee from 0.1% to 0.6%, and first chose to start with college students.
The results of this initiative are obvious to all. It can be said that Tencent's move this time is a public outrage.
At this stage, the mainland's virtual platform payment software is not the only one WeChat Pay. Among them, Alipay is a payment platform with the same role as WeChat Pay.
Alipay includes not only young people, but also many merchants. Similarly, in Alipay, money transactions and transfers also need to be charged a handling fee.
For individual users, when the cumulative amount of cash withdrawal is less than 20,000 yuan, no additional handling fee will be charged, and when the cumulative amount exceeds 2,000 yuan, the user needs to pay a handling fee of 1% to Alipay.
For individual merchants who settled on the platform, at first, Alipay stipulated that these merchants would charge a certain handling fee before withdrawing.
However, from September 2021 to 2024, between September 30, the handling fee will be waived; The preferential discount policy is also implemented for the account withdrawal fee of corporate merchants, and the fee interest rate continues to decline.
Compared with WeChat Pay, Alipay's approach is much more conscientious.
Not only that, banks are a necessary place for citizens to store and protect money, and in recent years, if they use bank cards for direct card payment, they do not need to pay fees to third-party institutions.
And transferring money to bank cards through WeChat Pay, there is actually a handling fee of one thousandth, which has made everyone dissatisfied for a long time, and Tencent's decision to increase the handling fee this time has become a breakthrough for people to vent their dissatisfaction.
From free at the beginning, to the low interest rate fee later, until the recent increase in the handling fee standard, WeChat Pay seems to be testing the user's bottom line step by step.
If after the release of this increase measure, the silence of users is still obtained, the next fee may be higher.
The biggest obstacle to the interruption of the WeChat Pay plan this time is that most people notice their intentions and choose to protect their legitimate interests, and have no choice but to apologize and change their strategy.
Development should be more beneficial to the people
Although Tencent's decision to raise the handling fee rate is very unorthodox, the public relations measures taken by the entire company in response to the public opinion triggered by this incident are very rapid and in place.
First start with the acceptance of the people in colleges and universities to test it, and after finding that there are many negative comments, they immediately apologize and explain the reason, and sell a wave of "miserable" by the way. Calm public opinion for after-effects.
It can be said that this is a very successful crisis public relations, but it also makes people see some hidden intentions and attitudes of Tencent towards the huge user group, as if it is gradually lowering people's psychological expectations and deliberately testing people's bottom line of acceptance.
Tencent is an Internet company that derives revenue from the development of various Internet businesses.
Among them, the WeChat APP is a successful work of Tencent. But as the saying goes, you can only become a real Maxima if you can meet Bole's Maxima, otherwise you can only be ignored, even if you have the quality of becoming a Maxima, you will be depressed by the objective reality environment.
If WeChat is only satisfied with the primary form that has just been developed, does not listen to user feedback, and does not develop new areas of use, then there must be no place for WeChat in the mobile phone social software use market now. In other words, the development of WeChat is inseparable from the support of users.
The rise of WeChat relies on the software's huge user base, with 1.15 billion people now using WeChat on the mainland, according to statistics. WeChat Pay now has a market share of more than 50%, which is also closely related to the huge user base.
It can be said that the development of WeChat Pay is dependent on users and lasts, so it is more necessary to follow the laws of the market, listen to the opinions of users, and take the needs of users as the development orientation, rather than turning around ruthlessly after development, intending to grab benefits from users in a dark way.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China has removed a number of apps, including Lock Screen Master, Qupai, Smart Host, etc. These removed apps, except for some individual violations of mainland normative laws, the rest of the software common point is that they harm the interests of users.
Among them, after the people's report, some software such as "Extraordinary Clean Up Butler" was forced to ask for user information in violation of laws and regulations during use, and automatically set up user accounts, and after being reported by users, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology removed it according to national laws and regulations.
The relationship between mobile phone software and users is benign, and the development of WeChat Pay is more closely related to users.
The popularity of virtual networks traverses people's lives, but it does not represent people's money, and it has to be spent in some unnecessary places. Especially WeChat Pay, this attempt to quietly radiate from part to whole, so that more and more people can subtly accept their practices and obtain benefits.
This method is very effective to some extent, after all, in ancient times, there was a saying that "a thousand miles of embankment, collapsed in the anthill".
If it weren't for the fact that more people found the irrationality this time, opposed the rise in fee rates, and formed a large-scale online public opinion on social media, perhaps WeChat Pay would have been successful.
epilogue
It can be seen from the practice of WeChat Pay to increase the fee rate this time that the operation of the enterprise is not unrelated to our people.
The mainland is a socialist country with public ownership as the main body and various ownership economies developing together, and it is our consensus that the people are masters of their own country. Therefore, the development of private enterprises is to a large extent inseparable from the people.
If in the future, most companies follow the practice of WeChat Pay, arbitrarily increase the fee rate, dig out their minds to obtain benefits from the people, impose excess fees on us, and empty gloves white wolf, what a terrible thing it will be. Moreover, it would encourage the ambitions of some capital.
WeChat Pay's repeated attempts to test people's bottom line should be more worthy of our vigilance. At the same time, it is also hoped that the WeChat Pay platform can take the needs of consumers to heart, seriously solve problems, redivide charging standards, and provide users with better services.