Nowadays, due to the continuous development of Internet technology, online payment has gradually entered everyone's life. According to the 2021 Global Payments Report, online payment accounts for half of all payment methods in China. Not only that, according to the research data of the China Internet Information Center, there are 872 million people in China who use the Internet to pay. It can be seen that online payment in China has become the preferred way for everyone to pay.
In China's online payment market, Alipay and WeChat are two of the giants. According to the news released by the two companies, the number of users using Alipay has already exceeded 1 billion, and the number of users using WeChat Pay has exceeded 1.2 billion. In addition, according to iResearch data, the sum of the two has occupied 90% of China's online payment market.
Although the current online payment field has always occupied an important position in these two companies, it is not that other online payment methods have no room for survival. Recently, an emerging payment APP has begun to emerge, and the current number of users has exceeded 140 million, and the future development is unlimited. And this emerging payment APP is the digital yuan.
The digital yuan began a pilot
In fact, a long time ago, the relevant departments of the state began to study the framework and content of the digital people. The reason why the state has begun to study digital currency shows that today's online payment has a great role in China's financial market. If a private enterprise is directly allowed to grasp the network payment, from a long-term point of view, it should not be a good thing for both the country and the people.
After years of testing and trials, according to the data released by the central bank, 1.55 million merchants have supported the use of digital yuan, and the transaction amount is close to 62 billion yuan. Perhaps feeling that the time is ripe, now in 2022, according to the news of China Economic Network, the pilot version of the digital yuan mobile phone software on January 4 has landed on major platforms. Nowadays, anyone who is residents of a specific area can try to install this software.
At present, it can be used in 11 regions such as Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, Shanghai, Xiong'an and Hainan. It is also worth mentioning that it also includes the winter Olympic venues in the cities of Beijing and Zhangjiakou. Seeing this, some people may wonder, since they are all online payment methods, what are the unique advantages of the digital yuan compared with the current online payment giants?
The unique advantages of the digital renminbi
Although WeChat and Alipay now involve a lot of fields, whether it is online shopping, paying phone bills and property fees, utilities, or you can take various transportation workers without bringing money, as well as buying insurance and transferring money and so on. However, compared with the digital yuan, there are two aspects that it cannot compare.
The first is the security aspect. Although Alipay and WeChat are doing well in the field of security, they are still private enterprises, if they suddenly encounter any unexpected situations, such as the company's problems, or the company's servers are hacked. It is difficult to guarantee the existence of funds in people's existence. The digital yuan, which is essentially a fiat currency, has state support behind it, so it will be very safe, and there will be almost no situation of the above-mentioned private enterprises.
The second is that payment is more convenient. We all know that if we want to use Alipay and WeChat Pay, we must turn on traffic. If you encounter mobile phone arrears or bad signal problems, it is easy to have embarrassing scenes of not being able to pay. Whether the digital yuan opens or not, it only needs to open the "touch" function in the mobile phone software to pay.
Because for the current Alipay and WeChat, these two advantages of the digital yuan are too unique. In particular, the first one is almost impossible for the two companies to achieve, so with the continuous promotion of the digital yuan, the share of the future online payment market, WeChat and Alipay will most likely decrease. Some people have questioned that since the development of the digital yuan is so good, what should Alipay and WeChat do in the future, will they be replaced?
Will Alipay and WeChat be replaced?
For this question, I believe it is difficult for everyone to answer. After all, the digital yuan has only just begun to pilot, whether it is a lack of function or popularity, so there is still a long way to go before the function is complete and officially launched. At present, the position of Alipay and WeChat is still very stable.
Therefore, many media boldly speculate that although Alipay and WeChat will not be replaced, it is likely that the digital yuan will occupy the mainstream of the market in the future, and WeChat and Alipay will hold a smaller share of the market share. Not only that, but it is possible that the digital yuan will have many functions associated with Alipay and WeChat in the future.
In general, the reason why countries have launched the digital yuan, in addition to this reason, is also the preference for global network payments. After all, there is no shortage of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin in the global trading market. In the future, when scientific information technology advances again, the proportion of online payments in global transactions may rise. The launch of the digital yuan in China is also a preparation to conform to the trend of the times. If you had to choose, would you like to pay in digital yuan or something else?