For all bank credit card centers, when "physical cards will eventually disappear" has become common knowledge, a battle to transform the account base is inevitable.

The so-called "account base" is based on the "card base". Traditional credit card consumption is based on card swiping behavior in offline scenarios. In the era of mobile payment, credit card entities often do not appear. As long as the credit card account is bound to a certain front-end payment tool, the account can be debited by scanning the QR code to pay. This is called "Account base".

In fact, although it is obvious to embrace the wave of mobile payments in the payment field, banks running on the traditional financial track are still in the critical stage of digitalization and cardless transformation.

However, for banks, from card base to account base, it involves the improvement of the entire process from product design, marketing path, user experience, and risk model. This will be a long-term battle.

01 Seize the mainstream entrance

In fact, the battle for online traffic is as cruel as the competition in the offline credit card market more than ten years ago.

A real dilemma for the entire credit card industry is that offline transaction volume has been declining for many years. Even in offline scenarios, payments are all completed online. Therefore, simply increasing the number of card issuances no longer makes much sense; increasing the utilization rate of credit cards is the key.

When it comes to mobile payment, the first thing that comes to mind is still Alipay and WeChat payment. If these entrances cannot be seized, the probability of credit cards becoming dormant cards will greatly increase. However, for most users, the number of credit cards bound to WeChat and Alipay is not too many, and entrance resources are limited. For major bank credit card centers, obtaining these micro entrances has become the most important thing at the moment. A battle.

The market strategies of many banks can reflect this strategic choice. For example, Ping An Credit Card has recently launched incentives for card binding. Customers who first bind to WeChat or Alipay and make any purchases can enjoy a 10 yuan cash rebate. For users who already hold credit cards, linking their cards is just a matter of effort, so the incentive effect is very obvious.

Another interesting method lies in credit card points.

Points are a way for credit cards to give back to users. This benefit comes from the profit sharing of card swiping fees obtained by the bank, which means that the card issuer needs to generate enough revenue before it can give points back to users.

The handling fees for online card swiping have always been lower than offline. Therefore, most credit cards have not been entitled to credit card points for online consumption. However, starting a few years ago, Ping An, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, CITIC, China Merchants Bank, etc. have successively launched a variety of card types and begun to try to reward online points. model. Still taking the above-mentioned Ping An credit card activity as an example, points feedback is also one of the means to promote card binding. During the activity, those who bind Ping An credit card on WeChat or Alipay and make purchases will receive 1 point for every 1 yuan spent.

02 Fierce Battle in the APP Jianghu

However, WeChat and Alipay’s promotion of card binding is only the first step in the development of credit card “account-based” products, although this may be the most important step at the moment. In the long term, the planning of each bank's reconciliation-based products is far from simple.

In fact, bank credit card centers and platforms such as Alipay, WeChat, and UnionPay Cloud QuickPass are upstream and downstream of each other in the development process, and are dependent on each other, but they also have control over the data on the user side and the merchant side. There are many games in the consideration of practical interests such as profit sharing and rate sharing.

To a certain extent, bank credit cards are not willing to just lie behind payment apps such as Alipay, WeChat Pay or UnionPay QuickPass. The strategic choice of banks to move to the front end is based on the traffic thinking that users are king on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is based on banks' thirst for data.

There are two paths for banks to move towards the front end: one is to cooperate directly with merchants, especially online e-commerce. In fact, the cooperation model between credit cards and e-commerce is already very mature. E-commerce platforms with a certain amount of traffic have cooperated with banks, from full-category e-commerce such as Taobao and JD.com to vertical e-commerce platforms such as iQiyi, Dianping, and Benlife. Each merchant has its own exclusive credit card and traffic fans, and the credit card center rewards users with benefits in the form of cash, coupons, etc. The online traffic captured through these card types is dispersed and precise.

In fact, for merchants, working directly with banks is not entirely unattractive.

At least in the most intuitive cost aspect, bank card swiping fees are lower than WeChat Pay and Alipay. The bank's online card payment fee is around 0.5% for credit cards and 0.25% for debit cards. Although WeChat Pay and Alipay are free for some large merchants, in most cases the rate is no less than 0.5%, basically around 0.6%, which is slightly higher than the bank's online card payment rate. For merchants with large transaction volumes, this price difference is also a considerable cost.

Another way is to build your own APP. Of course, this part will also involve certain subsidies, but subsidies are only the first step. It is not easy to generate user stickiness after traffic conversion. Especially for banks that have only begun to focus on the retail side in recent years, how to retain users has a greater knowledge.

There are not many credit card APPs that are doing well right now. Except for credit card veterans such as China Merchants Bank, Ping An Pocket Bank is a bank APP that has seen strong user growth in recent years. It is also a rare credit card and debit app in the industry. The fully card-integrated platform has increased the mutual diversion of credit card and debit card users. At the beginning of 2016, the cumulative number of users was less than 16 million, and now it has exceeded 60 million.

In addition to the traffic import from Ping An Bank itself, the support from Ping An Group provides Pocket Bank with a richer range of products and scenarios. This also forms the basis of the stickiness of this APP and becomes a competition for credit card customers. Longboard.

Getting to the front end is not an easy task. For banks, operating a C-side APP means that the product thinking needs to be transferred from the card base to the account base, and this involves product design, the construction and interaction of online and offline scenarios, marketing paths, and user experience. , The improvement of the entire process of risk models is not only an upgrade of the operating model, but also a management change for the credit card centers of various banks.