Mobile phone manufacturers entering mobile payment did not shake WeChat and Alipay

After Apple and Samsung, domestic mobile phone manufacturers began to exert their strength in the field of mobile payment. China UnionPay announced yesterday that UnionPay will pay full support for Huawei Pay; today, China UnionPay will also launch Xiaomi Payment (MI Pay) with Xiaomi.

At the moment of WeChat payment and Alipay's prevalence, mobile phone manufacturers have taken a completely different approach to mobile payments. Unlike WeChat and Alipay, which rely mainly on scanning QR code, mobile phone manufacturers almost all support NFC. Mobile phones only need to be close to POS terminals that support UnionPay cloud flash (no need to scan QR code) to complete the payment.

However, mobile payments from Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei are not exactly the same. The general differences are as follows:

Apple Pay, Huawei Pay and MI Pay are similar in function. Supporting NFC-enabled Apple, Huawei or Xiaomi mobile phones, you only need to close the UnionPay cloud POS terminal to complete the payment by fingerprint or password. Dimension code.

The difference between Samsung Pay and the above is that Samsung Pay not only supports NFC technology, but also supports MST (Magnetic Signal Security Transmission Technology). That is to say, in addition to the UnionPay cloud POS terminal, almost all POS cards can be swiped. The terminal can use Samsung Pay.

What is the mobile phone manufacturer?

Apple's Apple Pay was first introduced. As a company that combines hardware and software but still uses hardware sales as its main source of revenue, Apple is not replacing payment instruments such as Paypal, WeChat Pay or Alipay. Apple prefers to increase user stickiness through Apple Pay, which in turn will boost iPhone sales.

The same is true for domestic mobile phone manufacturers. Whether it is Huawei or Xiaomi, it is not intended to completely replace WeChat and Alipay. The original intention of its launch is that today, mobile phone manufacturers must have new scenes to retain the old scene. Users or woos new users.

When both Apple and Samsung support NFC, if Huawei and Xiaomi do not support it, they will be in a very passive situation.

Not only mobile payment, but also the previous fingerprint identification and Type-C interface. Once a mainstream manufacturer launches, subsequent vendors need to adopt a follow-up strategy. Since the fingerprint recognition function became popular, Xiaomi launched the first mobile phone that supports fingerprint recognition in November last year.

Unable to shake WeChat Alipay

As early as February this year, when it was not in China, there were many voices that it was expected to subvert WeChat or Alipay. However, in fact, Apple Pay has been flat in China for half a year, and currently only some merchants in large cities support it.

Since the iPhone 5S or the previously released Apple mobile phone does not support the NFC function, according to data provided by Apple's financial report and third-party organizations, Apple currently has about 100 million NFC-enabled devices in China. Considering the conversion rate issue, the actual number of Apple Pay users in China will be far below 100 million. In contrast, the number of WeChat users and the number of Alipay users is another order of magnitude, with more than 400 million and 600 million users respectively.

Huawei, Samsung and Xiaomi are also facing the same problem. Since several manufacturers have recently launched NFC functions, the number of devices supporting NFC is less than 100 million. Considering the conversion rate, the number of users will be much lower. At 100 million.

Even if all users' mobile phones support NFC function in the near future, mobile phone manufacturers are also at risk of losing users, because once a user replaces Xiaomi mobile phone with Huawei mobile phone, naturally, instead of using MI Pay, they use Huawei Pay. vice versa.

China currently has 1.3 billion mobile phone users, but after Nokia, there has not been a mobile phone manufacturer that accounts for more than 30% of the Chinese mobile phone market, and the market is almost one rotation per year. Therefore, the number of real-time users of a mobile phone manufacturer in China is almost impossible to exceed 400 million, which means that the number of users of mobile payment will also be less than 400 million.

But no matter what brand of mobile phone the user replaces, you can use WeChat payment and Alipay. In other words, the iron hits the WeChat payment and Alipay, the mobile phone manufacturer mobile payment.

UnionPay is wise and helpless

Behind the launch of mobile payment by mobile phone manufacturers, China UnionPay has appeared almost every time. Behind this, it is the crisis that CUP wants to use counterfeit mobile phone manufacturers to counter WeChat payment and Alipay.

With the rise of third-party payment such as WeChat payment and Alipay in recent years, UnionPay, which mainly relies on offline credit card business, has begun to decline. At present, in many domestic first-tier cities, people can go out and even go out with a single mobile phone every day, which makes the card payment start to become dispensable.

The cooperation with Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi has become a life-saving straw for UnionPay to use this more secure and innovative payment method to maintain its offline credit card payment.

Joining hands with mobile phone manufacturers is a wise and helpless way for China Mobile to make mobile payment. The sensible point is that UnionPay lacks star products in mobile payment. Apple Pay is just the right time, but it is frustrated that UnionPay has to go to Apple and Huawei. And Xiaomi pays the fee, while having to share the most precious user data with them.

In a sense, Apple Pay and others also carry the payment dreams of traditional commercial banks. From the birth of Yu'ebao to the WeChat red envelope popular in the country, banks can only watch the third-party payment grow and develop, but they have never really awakened. I used to enjoy it, and now I can only force myself to accept change.

Apple Pay entered China, and Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and other mobile phone manufacturers to follow up, NFC popular in China and eventually mature, UnionPay and commercial banks are likely to profit. But for UnionPay, it has not really got rid of the crisis.