Mobile phones as transaction terminals for mobile finance are also the battleground for multi-party games. Reports suggest that starting from next month, China Unicom's mobile payment service will be officially launched in Beijing, allowing people to take buses and subways by "brushing" their phones. A reporter from our newspaper learned from a person at Unicom's marketing department that there has been no official notification regarding the launch of this service yet. From the mobile website, we learned that in Shanghai, there are 47 merchants where one can "brush" their phone card. China Mobile has already implemented the use of mobile phones to "brush" metro cards in Shanghai, but not in Beijing.
The main bottleneck for mobile phone "card brushing" lies in the high cost of processing payments and the limited number of consumption outlets. Taking the mobile wallet service of mobile communications as an example, it includes three functions: online payment, mobile "card brushing", and SMS payment. The online payment and SMS payment functions are equivalent to Alipay, which means selecting a bank and transferring fees to the mobile wallet account. Through the mobile wallet, you can pay phone bills, utility bills, shop, etc. However, to use the mobile "card brushing" function, you need to go to the business hall to exchange for a SIM card with "card brushing" functionality and pay a 150 yuan card replacement fee. When I went to the San Yuan Bridge Mobile Business Hall in Chaoyang District to apply for such a card, I was informed that the business hall did not have these cards. Only a few larger designated business halls could handle this service. Moreover, if the brushable SIM card is lost, you must report it lost and spend another 150 yuan to reapply for a new card to retrieve the pre-deposited fees on the old card. If you stop using the "card brushing" chip, the pre-deposited fees on the chip cannot be retrieved.
Finally, I exchanged for a "card brushing" chip at the Dongzhimen Business Hall, but the subsequent card brushing experience was not smooth. According to the mobile website, there are 163 merchants where payments can be made by "brushing" the phone. I randomly visited three places, including Yunwei Vegetarian in Xicheng District, Shangdao Coffee Baisheng Store at Fuxingmen, and Dia天天 Supermarket Xibahe Store in Chaoyang District. Among them, only Shangdao Coffee can make payments by "brushing" the phone. The other two both indicated that they cannot "brush" the phone. The cashier at Dia天天 told me that they used to be able to "brush" the phone, but because the operation was relatively complicated, they had suspended this service for a long time. The cashier at Yunwei Vegetarian told me that they have this equipment, but because it is rarely used, it has been dismantled. If customers need it, they can wait for the manager to come and install it temporarily.
Currently, most of the terminals for mobile payments are operated by operators. The popularity of the mobile payment system still needs to be observed. Analyst Fang Yingzhi from the China E-commerce Research Center told me that in terms of popularization, there are mainly two difficulties. First, credit cards and public transportation cards have very high penetration rates, almost everyone has one. If operators want to promote mobile payments, they must offer more attractive ways to attract customers. Secondly, there is the security issue of mobile payments. Mobile payments are equivalent to a third-party payment method. If the phone is stolen or lost, it would be quite troublesome. Operators also need to bear the responsibility of ensuring the security of mobile payments.
The innovation of mobile banking services: full functions, competing on features
China is the country with the most mobile phones, and the domestic market prospects for mobile banking are very broad. Surveys show that nearly six out of ten people hope to use mobile payments for living expenses, indicating that mobile payments occupy a place in the public consumption consciousness. President Zhang Bin of Digital 100 Market Research Company emphasized that as long as proper guidance is given, strong customer dependence will form, and that will also be the beginning of the mobile financial service industry chain obtaining super profits.
The various banks continuously developing and occupying the high ground of mobile banking is a very clear example. Our investigation found that almost all banks have opened mobile banking services. State-owned banks have the momentum to move network banking onto mobile phones, with very rich functions. Especially Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which not only includes functions such as account management, transfers, payments, wealth management, gold transactions, but also allows querying of housing provident funds, personal loans, and other accounts through mobile banking. ICBC data shows that the total number of its mobile banking customers has exceeded 20 million households, while the number of mobile customers of Construction Bank has also surpassed 13 million.
Joint-stock commercial banks, on the other hand, each have unique strategies, attracting customers through distinctive features in mobile banking services.
For instance, Everbright Bank's mobile arbitrary transfer service only requires entering the phone number, name, and transfer amount to complete the transfer. If the recipient has already activated Everbright mobile banking, the funds will directly be transferred into the recipient's mobile bank; if the recipient has not activated Everbright mobile banking, the recipient will receive a text message notification from Everbright Bank, and after filling in the receiving account, the transfer can be completed.
Industrial Bank exclusively launched the mobile silver trading business, allowing T+D operations on silver through mobile phones.
China Merchants Bank offers multiple versions of mobile network platforms for customers to choose from, such as the iPhone version of mobile banking, WAP version, professional version, and web version.
At the "2010 China Microfinance Summit Forum", Yu Li, director of the Financial Markets Division of the People's Bank of China Research Bureau, pointed out that mobile banking helps banks solve the problems of establishing branch costs and handling small transaction costs, reducing the cost for low-income groups and people in remote areas to obtain financial services, while ensuring the sustainability of financial services.