China Telecom's ePay, which claims to be aimed at 70 million monthly active users, empowering more than 10 million offline merchant stores and more than 170 well-known online e-commerce, has recently encountered an "eventful autumn".
Recently, some users have publicly complained that ePay and its multiple platforms have "routine loans", including but not limited to inducing users to pay "membership fees", promoting loans in the name of handling mobile phone packages, etc., and many users are quite dissatisfied with the problem of ePay stealing bank cards and abnormally high loan interest rates.
Bedo Finance noted that Yipay is currently shrinking the scope of mutual finance business, and plans to sell all the shares of its small loans, insurance agents, and financing guarantee companies to cope with increasingly stringent industry regulatory requirements. However, after the above-mentioned business is cleared, the cooperative business development and compliance operation of ePay will face challenges.
1. Induce payment, and there are concerns about information leakage
"The ePay lending platform induced me to open a 40 yuan monthly card, claiming that there are three lending channels, and if the loan fails, it will initiate compensation to the user, but at present, the three channels cannot be released, and the customer service refuses to solve the problem of monthly card refunds", on the black cat complaint platform, complaints about false publicity and inducement of charges are not uncommon.
Another user reported to the media that there are many ambiguous and misleading designs on the withdrawal page of the Orange Flower APP under ePay. According to Kaijia Finance and Economics, the Orange Flower withdrawal interface agrees with the options of the "Oak Rights and Interests Service Agreement" and "Information Authorization Letter", which is linked to the membership fee of 99 yuan/month, and the default continuous deduction is made.
If the user does not check the relevant agreement and directly clicks "Withdraw", the jump page will prompt the rights and interests such as audio-visual membership and travel food coupons enjoyed after opening the membership, and the content of "join the membership and proceed to the next step" will be bold and enlarged, and continue to induce the user to open a membership.
It is not difficult to imagine that once users fail to pay attention to the specific content of the service agreement, or make a mistake under the guidance of the interface, they will fall into the trap of high membership fees. And the so-called "membership service" of Orange Flower is actually provided by Shenzhen Oak Black Card Network Technology Co., Ltd., and is not operated independently.
The author tried to register in the Orange Flower APP and apply for a credit line and learned that in the information filling stage, Orange Flower requires users to upload identity documents and perform face authentication, and also needs to fill in a number of privacy information such as occupation, education, detailed address, and common contacts, and even requires the location permission to be turned on.
Not only that, the user also needs to agree to the personal consumption credit agreement and personal credit authorization letter from Zhong'an Small Loan, and the actual financial business handling party is Shenzhen Zhonglian Commerce Co., Ltd. and its cooperative financial institutions, and Orange Flower only provides the user with the service entrance of other financial service parties, and claims that the user's actual transaction behavior has nothing to do with it.
Although the author's approval application was ultimately not approved, after that, Orange Xiaohua took the initiative to send a text message and recommended other loan platforms such as Xiaolong Wallet and Bajie Financial Services to the author, acting as a diversion role in Internet loans, and through the above-mentioned loan platforms, there is no need to upload relevant personal information, only need to fill in the mobile phone number.
This begs the question, if users do need to borrow money from the third-party platform recommended by Orange Flower, will the personal information be shared with the latter by default? It is important to know that the former China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) has previously clearly pointed out that obtaining authorization by means of tacit consent, general authorization, etc., is suspected of infringing on consumers' right to personal information security.
2. Consumer fraud, selling "loans" with "gifts"
In fact, this is not the first time that ePay has been reported by users for "routine loans", nor is it the first time that it has had information leakage problems, the most typical is the "installment payment, free flight" activity that ePay has been criticized before.
The essence of the so-called "free machine" is that the staff of Wing Pay use their identity information to handle the "Orange Installment" comprehensive credit financial contract product in Wing Pay without the user's knowledge, that is, through a mobile phone package, the online loan product is bundled in disguise.
Some users said on the Black Cat complaint platform that if the repayment is overdue during use, they will receive reminders in the form of phone calls, text messages, etc.; Once you apply to the relevant customer service to give up or cancel the relevant contract, you will be told that you need to pay liquidated damages, which will also affect your personal credit investigation, which has seriously infringed on your personal rights and interests and is suspected of consumer fraud.
Not long ago, a number of ePay users said in an interview with China Business News that without their knowledge, the funds in the bank card were stolen through ePay, and because they could not find the whereabouts of the stolen funds, Epay said that "the funds that did not enter the ePay account do not belong to the scope of claims" and refused to take responsibility.
ePay emphasizes that there is triple verification for the ePay account opened by the user, and there is a joint verification of "payment password + SMS verification code" in different consumption scenarios, and the user's password is encrypted by the encryption machine and cannot be decompiled, and ePay itself cannot extract the user's password information.
It is reported that at present, the ePay fraud incident has affected nearly 400 people, although ePay has made claims for the losses of some victims, but most of the victims are still skeptical about the user information security management mechanism of ePay, as well as the risk control mode of multiple verification.
Beduo Finance learned that as early as September 2019, Tianyi Credit, a platform under Yipay, was deeply involved in a data security turmoil, and more than 10 people were taken away by the police on the grounds of "assisting in the investigation", which may be related to "routine loans" and "infringement of user privacy".
At that time, an industry insider revealed that Tianyi Credit used the identity of a state-owned enterprise to collect sensitive information and data such as users' personal information and preferences. For example, if the user agreement only analyzes user behavior and helps improve the product experience, the result is that the user portrait data is sold, and the user data is analyzed and collected for commercial purposes.
From this perspective, under the robe of ePay's Huamei user volume and industry popularity, there are many acne that wanders and tries to explore the edge of the regulatory red line.
Third, shareholders reorganized and the financial layout shrank significantly
It is worth noting that a vigorous reform is being carried out within Tianyi E-commerce Co., Ltd., the main body of wing payment operation. The company carried out a shareholder reorganization on May 6, with a total of 17 shareholders withdrawing, and only three major shareholders of China Telecom, Chengdu Industrial Capital and Jiaxing Qiying remain, and the corresponding shareholding ratio has not been announced.
In addition, Wing Pay is in full swing to shrink its business layout, and has now been listed on the Beijing Equity Exchange to transfer Tiancheng Insurance Agency Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sweet Orange Insurance Agency") and Tianjin Tianyi Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Tianyi Rongdan"), and the above-mentioned Zhong'an Small Loan is also the transfer object of Wing Payment.
Yi Pay plans to transfer 100% of the shares of Sweet Orange Baodai and Tianyi Rongdan, as well as 41.1765% of the shares of Zhongan Micro Loan. Specifically, the total existing assets of Tiancheng Baodai and Tianyi Rongdan are 59.43 million yuan and 401 million yuan respectively, and the total assets of Zhong'an Small Loan are 1.312 billion yuan.
According to this calculation, the total amount of assets listed for sale by Yipay is as high as 1 billion yuan. Yi Pay said that the above listing transfer matters to take the negotiable price of equity transfer, will be subject to the final asset appraisal report price, after the successful transfer, the company will also unload the Internet small loan, financing guarantee and insurance agency three major licenses.
According to public information, Tianyi Rongdan is a new company established in October 2021, and the cooperation between Yipay and Zhong'an Microfinance has only just completed its fifth anniversary. According to the analysis of industry insiders, the choice of wing payment to sell the equity of the above-mentioned company is related to the "refund order" requirement.
At the end of May this year, the "Provisions on Accountability for the Prevention and Resolution of Financial Risks (Trial)", which is known as the "refund order" by the market, clearly requires that all central enterprises shall not establish, acquire, or participate in various financial institutions in principle, and shall not participate in and increase their holdings in principle for financial institutions with smaller effects and greater risk spillovers in the main business of serving the main industry.
After the promulgation of this regulation, many central enterprises have begun to sell their equity in financial institutions and return to their main business. Wang Pengbo, chief analyst of the financial industry of Broadcom Consulting, said in an interview with International Financial News that in addition to the compliance level, there are also considerations in terms of profit margin and leverage ratio when selling shares of Internet small loan license by Wing Pay.
Wang Pengbo believes that the leverage ratio of the small loan license is obviously low compared with the consumer finance license, and it is reasonable for Yipay to sell it. However, after that, "Sweet Orange Finance", the main mutual finance section of Yipay, is likely to fall into the dilemma of not having a small loan license, and how to solve compliance issues in the future is also worth paying attention to in the market.