The British "Financial Times" wrote in an article on the 3rd, "After spending billions of yuan to subsidize users, Tencent has withdrawn from the payment war with Alibaba because it is difficult to compete with Alibaba's Alipay, and no longer hopes to control China. Mobile Payment Market".
In fact, we know that Alibaba and Tencent have fought many wars outside of mobile payments. Local life services, taxi software, social networking, games... For example, the taxi companies supported by both parties have also subsidized passengers and drivers before. The way to compete for market share, but ultimately ended in the merger of Tencent-backed Didi and Alibaba-backed Kuaishou, and it is self-evident who wins. Tencent is often the one who has the last laugh.
The climax of mobile payment competition can be said to start from the red envelope war in the Spring Festival of 2015. At the time, both companies spent billions of renminbi giving away red envelopes, hoping to attract more new users. In fact, both for Tencent and Alibaba, the importance of mobile payment is self-evident, because this is not only the last link of its entire ecological closed loop, e-commerce, games, video, O2O life services, with the help of payment tools, Both Tencent and Alibaba can turn huge traffic into cash flow. Payment is also the cornerstone of Alibaba and Tencent’s Internet financial ecosystem. Even if Alipay and WeChat are not profitable, they can indirectly attract users to use the company’s wealth management, insurance, small business and consumer loan products. Profit by expanding more financial scenarios.
Tencent disclosed in its latest quarterly financial report that the number of user-bound cards has exceeded 300 million , which can reflect changes in the number of users and activities. But WeChat paid too much operating costs, and eventually even Tencent as strong as Tencent had to start charging users. Alipay's biggest potential competitor is actually WeChat Pay. According to the data released by Alipay Wallet recently, Alipay Wallet has more than 270 million active users, accounting for more than 80% of the market share in the mobile payment market (there may be false highs) , The profitability of Ant Financial behind Alipay is very strong.
You must know that Alipay and WeChat Pay are now the largest and second largest mobile payment tools in China, respectively, but WeChat Pay and Alipay can be said to form a stark contrast. So today, a year and a half later, it's time for us to reflect on this question - why did Tencent spend billions in subsidies and not win the battle for mobile payments?
Jiangnan angry youth published such a rather interesting point of view in an article, insert and share here:
To be precise, WeChat Pay does not compete with Alipay. Alipay is a payment tool, while WeChat Pay is just an ecosystem based on WeChat to provide application scenarios for payment. WeChat is an underlying architecture and an ecosystem. Therefore, WeChat payment and Alipay are not exactly a level of competition.
I clearly agree with the second half of this point of view. WeChat Pay and Alipay are indeed not competing on one level, but for the first half, my point of view is exactly the opposite. In my opinion, Alipay, which is independent of Alibaba's system, looks more like an ecosystem than WeChat payment that is parasitic in the WeChat scene.
In fact, compared to Alipay, there is a gap between WeChat Wallet and Alipay in terms of application scenarios and user base, but it is not as big as expected. Alipay has all the functions, and WeChat wallet is almost complete. The key to forming such a world of difference between the two is that Alipay is completely independent of Alibaba's system, and WeChat Pay, just like its name, is often just a function of WeChat. Such positioning makes a huge difference in the perception formed by the two to users.
Before, I asked a question in the circle of friends, "Since WeChat payment is very high frequency now, why has not launched an independent application until now?" Once the question was raised, it caused a huge controversy among friends. Most of my friends expressed different views, three of which are the most typical:
1) Because WeChat payment is only high-frequency in WeChat, apart from the super entrance and social attributes of WeChat, WeChat payment is nothing.
2) Maybe the usage status of WeChat payment users cannot support an independent payment application. The red envelopes based on WeChat’s derivative game make us accept WeChat wallets. High-frequency uses other than WeChat will come later. If it is a new independent application , Alipay already exists, and users will not be interested in downloading one more duplicate independent application.
3) Alipay is imitating WeChat to engage in social networking. If WeChat wallet is independent from social networking, it is really dead.
In fact, it is difficult for us to deny the political correctness of the above three viewpoints. Under the myth of "WeChat portal is omnipotent", there are not a few people who overestimate the role of WeChat. Many people think that with WeChat, everything is actually there. . It is true that the success of WeChat Pay is indeed inseparable from the closed social scene of WeChat, but in many cases WeChat Pay cannot surpass Alipay. Tencent has defeated the mobile payment battle. The most critical reason may be that "WeChat Pay" not independent",
1. The key is the scene, not the social
If you have a better understanding of mobile payment, everyone can say a lot of truth, and the most important one must be about the scene. In fact, after years of red envelope wars, Tencent has proved with facts that although high-frequency red envelopes based on social relationships can bring a large number of users to WeChat Pay, how to become the user's entry point is still more based on consumption scenarios.
Ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, and various O2O services are the real reasons why WeChat Pay has grown. Many times we use WeChat payment, and it is not in WeChat. Meituan, Didi, JD.com, Ctrip, Maoyan... Let's think about it, when we experience the services of these companies and use WeChat to pay, is there any connection with WeChat's huge social relations? The answer is obvious.
WeChat Wallet was able to grab close to 30% of the mobile payment market share in such a short period of time. The fundamental reason is not the so-called social relations, but Tencent's hundreds of millions of offline subsidies in exchange. "Use WeChat Pay to swipe and get 10 yuan off immediately." This is the fundamental reason why WeChat Wallet poses a threat to Alipay. As for the earlier red envelopes and Tencent's social relations, the prosperity brought about in a short time can't explain anything. Facts are also proving that when the craze fades, WeChat Pay and Alipay have returned to the battle of scenes.
2. Success is also a social relationship, failure is also a social relationship
There is no doubt that Tencent's social relations are strong. This time, Alipay fell into a panic, but what did the strong social relations bring to WeChat Wallet? Mr. Wei Wuhui has a point of view, and in fact has already expressed the essence - what I have always said is that the WeChat red envelope is a social toy, not a financial tool. The money in the red envelope is going around, and it has nothing to do with finance. It looks very lively, but it has no commercial use.
In fact, it seems to be the case. The convenience of WeChat payment is far less than that of Alipay, and this is largely because social relations have dragged back.
On Alipay, you only need to know the account number of the other party to complete various capital flows. And WeChat payment or wallet, precisely because of the so-called social relationship, you must become friends to complete the free flow of funds. Some people say that WeChat does not need to be a friend to complete the transfer. But do you feel free to scan the QR code face-to-face?
I have always believed that the key to Tencent's inability to do finance lies in this. Users lack financial scenarios on Tencent's platform , and no one will recognize that the financial demand generated on this platform is a matter of course. Success is also a social relationship, and a failure is also a social relationship. If WeChat Pay wants to surpass Alipay, it may be yourself who must first make a revolution.
3. The independent application of WeChat wallet has long been imperative
There is no need for WeChat to launch an independent WeChat wallet application. In fact, many people maintain a similar view, and behind this is generally believed that WeChat wallet is a high-frequency application only in WeChat. In fact, I think that the word "high frequency" needs to be viewed rationally first. Whether Alipay is a high-frequency application, in fact, in terms of the frequency of opening, it is definitely not as high as news applications such as today's headlines, and it is completely incomparable with WeChat, but this does not prevent Alipay from becoming the largest third-party payment platform.
Tencent spending so much money offline is actually not in vain, and users' consumption habits have basically taken shape. The launch of an independent wallet application at this time will greatly change the current decline of WeChat Wallet. Well, I think the main reasons are as follows:
1. WeChat payment is actually very high frequency
In addition to the transfer between WeChat friends (and red envelopes) , you may use the payment function of WeChat Wallet when you go to various offline consumption scenarios. Especially now offline merchants are encouraging everyone to use WeChat payment. If a product that is used every day can't be considered a high-frequency application, then I don't know what else can be.
So from this point of view, I think WeChat payment is actually a high-frequency function with strong demand . This means that WeChat Pay can survive as an independent application, and the continuous drainage of offline consumption scenarios will bring nutrients to the growth of this independent application.
I remember the so-called "I already have a group purchase or takeaway app, so I don't need to download another app", but in fact many users have installed multiple similar apps, which one is cheaper to use? As long as users are profitable, in fact, most people don't care about the so-called "high download costs", not to mention that merchants are probably not willing to see Alipay's dominance.
2. Mobile Internet needs incubation thinking
Will WeChat Pay launch an independent app? I think there is an example worth referring to, and that is Facebook. The success of the PC era once made Facebook lose its way, but the transformation since then has been remarkable. When Facebook launched Facebook Messager earlier, there were countless people who were bad at it, but then Zuckerberg proved his foresight: "With independent functions, concepts and business models, Messenger must be self-contained and separate from Facebook." In fact, Messenger is now a huge success, with more than 800 million users.
WeChat now has the same problem. Although it is a super platform, it is not omnipotent. Take the financial sector as an example, WeChat has not achieved the expected success. And a question we have to think about, WeChat has basically covered all Chinese Internet users, but why does it always lag behind Alipay in finance.
WeChat is a super portal, and because it is a super portal, it should incubate other businesses independently through huge traffic, instead of doing everything by itself. Yingbao is a good example. Earlier, all Tencent games were downloaded through Yingbao. Soon Yingbao achieved a growth rate that competitors could not match. Going back to WeChat payment, WeChat should actually maintain a similar thinking.
3. A wallet that smells like banknotes
The benefits of an independent payment application to Tencent are self-evident. If Tencent is really willing to spend money to incubate such a product, when users use this product, it will be all related to consumption, which can just solve the problem that Tencent has always been confused about. .
Tencent has always been reluctant to separate the WeChat wallet function, and insisted on socializing together, which is not necessarily a good experience for users. A non-independent wallet application will have problems in security and operation, far less than an application that is directly opened as a wallet. In addition, Tencent's financial system is too chaotic, QQ wallet, WeChat wallet and Tenpay, these three systems are clearly separated, far from Alipay. It is also time for Tencent to solve the problem of inconsistent branding.
The independent development of Alipay wallet in those years caused quite a stir in the industry. After stepping out of Taobao's greenhouse, Alipay entered the more competitive offline market and competed with powerful rivals such as WeChat Pay, UnionPay and banks. But now no one should deny the choice of Alipay. Fan Zhiming, the person in charge of Alipay wallet, explained the reason for the choice when Alipay just announced its independence:
The function of the wallet is very different from that of Alipay on the PC side. In the PC era, Alipay was a payment tool and was "backgrounded", but the mobile phone is a natural private account. Like a wallet, you will always take it with you. As a mobile phone application, wallets are not separated from users, which is also an important reason for the independent development of wallets.
So what I want to say here is that the real reason for the rapid popularity of WeChat Pay or Alipay is not the so-called user base, nor the so-called social relations, but because the popularity of smartphones and the increase in Internet speed have made users’ Life is rapidly moving to the Internet, and users stay online all the time, which gradually makes payment, investment and other fund circulation behaviors mobile Internet-based, and the integration of more and more offline scenarios also makes payment from a simple tool to a real online wallet.
"Leaving Taobao, Alipay is nothing", I saw this view a few years ago. Now we are seeing a similar point of view. For WeChat Wallet, it is not independent. Although it can still grow in WeChat's greenhouse, it will never become a big tree in the sky. As for what WeChat says about connecting everything, who cares?