Mobile payment will soon become the standard of convenience stores, which is my judgment.

A few days ago, Alipay cooperated with Youzhi Station to promote mobile payment. Next, giants such as 7- 1 1 will follow suit. Together with us and Christie's before, mobile payment is being fully rolled out in the convenience store market. Although most people are quite unfamiliar with offline mobile payment, it has indeed entered the commercial field.

The outside world may wonder why you are so keen on mobile payment, convenience stores, this small business, just cash payment, there is no need to engage in such complicated payment methods, and even think that we are just blindly following the trend. As a practitioner, I hope to share the practice and experience of Meiyijia.

Cash payment is painful, but it has to be used.

We are willing to try various electronic payments for the simple reason that cash payment is not good enough. Cash payment is actually a high-cost payment method. If converted into a rate, it is not lower than all electronic payment methods on the market at present, which may be different from what most people usually understand. Why?

1) Cashiers face the risk of counterfeit money. Even though they have been very careful, there are still endless counterfeit money.

2) There are storage risks in the cash working capital of the store. Don't laugh, convenience stores are always at risk of being robbed.

3) The complicated and repeated change makes the cashier exhausted, and the store manager needs to queue up at the bank for deposits every day.

4) In order to get change, shops have to prepare a lot of change, but the change provided by banks to shops is limited, so they have to go to vegetable market stalls and other places to exchange change.

The things behind these cashiers actually cost us a lot of energy. If we spread it over every payment, the cost will be very high. The reason why cash payment is still mainstream now is actually mainly for customers' payment habits.

All kinds of cards, all kinds of troubles

Instead of cash, all kinds of physical cards are trying, but to be honest, convenience stores have not benefited much.

1) Bank card: There are 5,600 convenience stores in Meiyijia, and 80% of them have installed UnionPay POS cash registers.

Credit card spending is very popular, but unfortunately, it's not our dish. It's simple. Our characteristics are that customers pay a small amount, the unit price is low, and users have no motivation to swipe their cards. After all, swiping a card is slow. It takes 30 seconds from scanning the product into the machine to paying cash for change, while the whole process of swiping the card to enter the password signature and then checking the signature takes more than 1 minute. When the quantity is large, everyone is patient, but when the quantity is small, a few people are willing.

2) UnionPay flash payment: In 20 12, all major banks are promoting "flash payment", and all POS machines in Meiyijia accept flash payment.

UnionPay knows that the efficiency of swiping cards is low, so flash payment is aimed at this pain point. This is a non-contact IC chip card, and the electronic cash account is loaded on the chip card, so users can spend without entering a password. This is very suitable for the fast requirements of micropayments, but there are really too few cardholders of chip cards! Moreover, the electronic cash account of the chip card needs to be recharged at the bank outlet, which is very inconvenient. So a small number of customers have used the flash payment function.

3) City Card: Meiyijia has 800 stores in Shenzhen that can use "shenzhen tong".

The benchmark of city card is Hong Kong Octopus, and the docking effect between shenzhen tong and us in Shenzhen is also very good, providing recharge service and accepting consumption, which is very popular among stores and customers. Unfortunately, the city card needs to be equipped with special reading and writing equipment, and its scope of use is limited by the region. After all, not every city has such a developed city card.

NFC, not yet.

Mobile phone, this is the second thing that challenges cash after physical card. When it comes to mobile payment, Alipay is the hottest thing at the moment, but in fact, China Mobile was our first contact.

As early as 2007, China Mobile found us, showed the mobile wallet, got a chip in the mobile phone, and then realized the function of member's stored value consumption through the background system. In 2009, they began to vigorously promote this NFC service. However, operators and UnionPay repeatedly wavered in choosing the technical standards of 13.56GHZ and 2.4GHZ, resulting in slow business progress. Nature can only choose to wait and see.

To be honest, China Mobile has made a lot of efforts in realizing mobile payment. 20 10 became a shareholder in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and 20 1 10 applied for a third-party payment license. By 20 12, the mobile phone Bao Tong project, which cooperates with the wireless city project, is also aimed at building a city card. Dongguan Mobile has been negotiating with Meiyijia and carrying out the docking development of the project system. However, due to various reasons, the project has not been successfully launched at present.

In fact, in addition to cooperating with operators, we have actually tried mobile payment ourselves. In May 2009, based on the demand of members' stored value, the mobile wallet "Meiyibao" based on SMS verification code consumption was independently developed. Customers report their mobile phone numbers to the store and pay their expenses with SMS verification code. However, with the adjustment of the membership system and the introduction of the national policy on single-use prepaid cards, Meiyijia terminated this business in June 2065438+2003.

Hitchhiking AliPay

As mentioned above, we have explored a lot on the road of replacing cash and hit a wall, but in any case, we are still continuing this kind of effort, and now Alipay stands with us. So far, this is indeed the most confident way to replace cash.

On February 23rd last year, 65438+, Meiyijia became the first convenience store chain to launch Alipay wallet bar code payment. The user opens the Alipay wallet client, displays the barcode, and the clerk scans it with a scanning gun to complete the payment.

Why are you willing to cooperate with Alipay? Of course, we don't covet each other's fame. After all, we are businessmen, looking at costs and benefits. In fact, what moved us very much in this cooperation is that there is no cost.

The above-mentioned method of replacing cash requires adding some hardware to the store. Meiyijia has 5600 stores all over Guangdong, but actually it involves hardware changes, which is still very troublesome. Alipay is a bar code payment. On the bright side, there is no need to add hardware. We already have a scanning gun, and the cashier scans the goods when checking out.

So what we have done is to make some small software changes on the cashier system. Basically, the change is also very simple. It took us two weeks from the beginning to the completion of the docking. In terms of rates, it is still free during the promotion period. Internet giants are now racing around online, and they are willing to spend money. For merchants, this kind of cheapness is neither white nor white. Even if the rate is charged in the future, I believe it will not be higher than UnionPay.

In terms of income, this method does not need change and signature, and the cashier efficiency can be doubled. What many people ignore is that it is more real-time and faster than T+ 1 paid by UnionPay. In fact, improving the collection efficiency from stores to headquarters is also a benefit that cannot be ignored.

Where is the difficulty?

Isn't it difficult to talk a lot about the benefits of cooperation with Alipay? Of course, if it is unimpeded, the bar code payment will detonate instantly, but the data of our operation for one month is that the number of successful transactions in a single day exceeds 10000, which is really fast, but if it is distributed to more than 5,000 stores, this figure is still very small at present. In fact, it is not a simple matter for both the client and the store to push.

1) On the consumer side, although there are130,000 Alipay wallet customers in Guangdong, there are still many people who have not installed them. This still requires the efforts of Alipay.

2) Once installed, you can still use it. After all, the entry status of bar code payment in Alipay wallet is not as obvious as that of Yu 'ebao and transfer, and it is relatively new. Therefore, it takes a long education process to awaken users' understanding of this function, and in this process, users' anxiety about the security of mobile payment must be overcome. Theoretically, if every user prepares a bar code when paying, the cashier process will be very fast. But if everyone doesn't work well, it will slow down the cashier and wait until the cashier opens the Alipay App to know where the barcode is.

3) On the store side, the Internet is offline, and literacy at outlets is actually a difficult point. Just like every store has more than 10 thousand cashiers, it is not easy for them to get in touch with such fashionable and new things.

To be honest, our goal is not just to pay. For the Internet, traditional businesses like us have great expectations, including big data, precision marketing, O2O, etc. These are what Internet people often say. The official WeChat account in Alipay App has 400,000 fans in two weeks, and we have also tried to find nearby shops and play points. If we can establish a perfect membership system, analyze consumption habits, do precise marketing and optimize commodity inventory and supply chain in the future, it will be wonderful.

But we are entities, and we are very aware of the status quo. It's no use drawing cakes. For convenience stores, if the payment is not positive, the rest is empty talk. Therefore, we will try to promote the store more vigorously, such as paying with Alipay barcode, enjoying discounts on specific goods, and increasing the motivation of users to use this function.

Traditional businesses should not be afraid of the Internet. We look forward to the Internet, which pays more and more attention to the power of physical outlets. The power of offline outlets is underestimated and buried in the past. In fact, future convenience stores will take the road of "community service center". Now we have more than 20 kinds of convenience services, such as mobile phone recharge, water, electricity and coal payment, air ticket reservation and Tmall parcel collection.

Therefore, when we return to mobile payment and Alipay goes online, we should make good use of the stores. Compared with cash payment and physical card payment, electronic payment does have many comprehensive advantages. This is a fact. Now, technical and commercial barriers have been opened, and all that remains is for everyone to work together to popularize them.