Access network： making e-wallet more secure
Data source: People’s Bank of China, Network Clearing Co., Ltd. Drawing: Cai Huawei
The online payment business involving bank accounts needs to be cleared through the network, and the capital channel is more transparent, but the payment experience is not affected.
Liu Manning, who lives in Tongzhou District, Beijing, placed 14 orders in Taobao this year, and paid by China Merchants Bank credit card bound by Alipay, spending more than 10,000 yuan. "Most of the things I bought were not pre-sold, so I quickly placed an order for payment just after zero. At that time, it was definitely the peak period of snapping up, but the payment process was very smooth and there was no stagnation when paying. " Liu Manning said.
The central bank stipulates that all third-party online payment services involving bank accounts are cleared through the network. The full name of the network is the network payment and clearing platform of non-bank payment institutions. Whether consumers transfer money from a savings card to a WeChat red envelope, or transfer the balance of Alipay to a bank card for cash withdrawal, or pay through a credit card bound by Jingdong wallet, the network connection plays a key role in the behind-the-scenes liquidation process.
As an important financial infrastructure, Netlink has access to more than 400 banks and all 115 licensed online payment institutions including Alipay and Tenpay (WeChat Pay).
Before the establishment of the network, online payment institutions directly connected with banks for liquidation, which easily caused problems such as multi-head liquidation and unclear capital flow. For example, buying a pair of shoes from 300 yuan in Tmall, in short, the liquidation mode of the network connection is: consumers choose the savings card of China Construction Bank bound by Alipay to pay; When Alipay receives the payment request, it automatically initiates the agreement payment to Netlink, which saves the transaction information in the database and forwards the request to CCB. After 300 yuan was deducted from the consumer’s account, CCB informed the network that the deduction had been successful; Netlink then informed Alipay that the payment was successful and the transaction was completed.
From the payment data released by the central bank in the third quarter of this year, we can get a glimpse of the rapid growth of online business. The data shows that Netlink handled 33.655 billion transactions in the third quarter, amounting to 12.68 trillion yuan; The daily average processing business was 366 million transactions, an increase of 3.09 times compared with the second quarter; The average daily processing amount was 137.822 billion yuan, up 3.65 times from the previous month.
However, when consumers pay for goods, they may not be aware of the changes brought by the network connection, which is mainly due to the optimization of the back-end clearing system, which will not have much impact on the front-end operation behavior and usage habits.
What impact will access to the network bring to the payment institution? The person in charge of the payment institution serving an e-commerce platform said: "At the beginning of May this year, we cut some e-commerce businesses to the network for liquidation, which improved the user payment experience in a short time. By analyzing the data of 40 days before and after cutting, we found that the success rate of user card binding increased by 2.34 percentage points, and the success rate of PC-side fast payment increased by 2.39 percentage points. "
"double 11" is a big test for the network. According to the data provided by Netlink, since November this year, more than 90% of the online payment services jointly carried out by payment institutions and commercial banks have been handled through Netlink. On the day of "double 11", Netlink handled 1.17 billion inter-agency payment transactions, and the corresponding peak value of inter-agency transaction processing exceeded 92,000 transactions per second, which also set a record for clearing institutions at home and abroad.
"double 11" is the peak of online payment over the years, and the peak time has repeatedly set a global concurrent peak record, which brings great challenges to the system capacity and line bandwidth of the participants, and is a centralized test of the scientific and technological capabilities of the participants. Xue Hongyan, director of Internet Finance Center of Suning Financial Research Institute, thinks that the processing performance and peak load-carrying capacity of Netlink have been verified and recognized by the market from the situation of "double 11" this year.
"Disconnecting direct connection" leaves traces everywhere in the transaction, making the payment account safer and the operation and maintenance cost of the payment institution lower.
In recent years, the rapid expansion of online payment services has played a positive role in supporting economic development and the convenience of people’s lives, on the other hand, it has also brought some problems.
The person in charge of a small and medium-sized payment institution was very touched by this: "Before the establishment of the network, our company mainly settled through the agency model, which is the so-called’ direct connection’. At that time, we established a total of eight clearing channels with eight banks. However, in this mode, because the interface standards and security specifications between these clearing systems are different, our operation and maintenance costs are pushed to a particularly high level. "
Under the traditional "direct connection" mode, the management of customer reserve fund is also a difficult point. After consumers buy goods online, the payment they made before receiving the goods has been kept in the bank account opened by the online payment institution, which is the customer reserve. From the time the payment institution receives the payment to the merchant, the customer’s reserve fund will stay in its account for a period of time, and the reserve fund will also be misappropriated, which will endanger the security of the payment account.
The safety of capital flow has attracted much attention. Yan Lidong, a member of the expert committee of China Supply Chain Financial Services Alliance, said that in the past, after a number of banks set up accounts, online payment institutions were able to complete all payment transactions, which essentially enabled the inter-bank clearing function. Because the capital flow and information flow only circulate in the payment institution itself, the supervisor can only see the changes of funds in the bank account of the payment institution, but can’t effectively supervise the possible violations in the payment process.
After the establishment of the network, these chaos is expected to be gradually improved. Zhao Yi, a special researcher at the Research Center for Payment and Clearing of the Institute of Finance of China Academy of Social Sciences, said that the original intention of the establishment of the network link was to "break the direct connection". "Broken direct connection" can leave traces everywhere in the transaction, help to monitor the flow of funds, maintain the stability of the payment system and ensure financial stability. A large-scale clearing platform dedicated to third-party payment institutions is also unique in the world.
Zhao Wei believes that, on the one hand, the network connection adopts a unified access platform, technical standards and message specifications, which not only saves the repeated construction costs of online payment institutions and banks, but also reduces the post-maintenance costs caused by inconsistent standards. On the other hand, after access to the network, the operation and maintenance costs and channel barriers of small and medium-sized payment institutions will be reduced, and they can get equal opportunities to compete with large institutions at the liquidation level, and they can focus on product innovation and customer service. The competition among all kinds of payment institutions will be carried out in enriching payment scenarios, facilitating financial services and enhancing customer experience in the future.
"The network is centralized and liquidated, all black-box operations will be exposed to the sun, and the safety of users’ funds can be guaranteed to the greatest extent." Zhao Yi said that according to the plan, customers’ reserve funds will be deposited in the special deposit account of the central bank for centralized custody, and it is expected that the phenomenon that payment institutions only focus on increasing the scale of reserve funds and endangering the safety of consumers’ funds will be curbed.
"The centralized depository system introduced by the central bank is not only for the need to protect the safety of customers’ funds of third-party payment institutions, but also based on the basic principles of financial supervision, which brings all kinds of’ innovations’ carried out by payment institutions based on customers’ reserve funds into a more prudent supervision category." Zhao Wei said.
There is a big platform behind the "small wallet", and future funds may be transferred between various "wallets"
"Some time ago, the typhoon Mangosteen hit Shenzhen. At that time, I was hiding at home and could only pass the time by online shopping. " Liu Xiaohui, who works in Shenzhen, said, "I placed a few orders with my mobile phone. I thought that the typhoon was coming and the payment would be affected. I didn’t expect it to be as smooth as usual."
The ability of "disaster tolerance" is greatly enhanced, which is one of the characteristics of the network. Using the distributed cloud architecture system, Networked has established six data centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Compared with the traditional "two places and three centers" architecture, the six data centers of Networked Network provide services to the outside world at the same time and back up each other, which means that any one of the computer rooms has a major failure, and other computer rooms can still provide services smoothly. "When Typhoon Mangosteen hit Shenzhen, we switched the business of Shenzhen data center to other cities in advance, so customer transactions were not affected at all." The relevant person in charge of the network introduced.
"The network signal of the supermarket downstairs in our house is not good. Every time I have to pay for something after I buy it, I have a special headache. I don’t know if I have paid successfully." Wu Lifang, who works in Shanghai, said. As payment and clearing involves information transmission between systems of different market participants, it is inevitable that there will be abnormal situations, such as the payment institution prompting consumers that the transaction failed, but the bank has actually deducted money.
"We invited payment institutions and bank personnel to jointly design an automatic reversal solution, which achieved full coverage of all national commercial banks. Take ICBC as an example. For a transaction paid by agreement, if Networked fails to get the result returned by ICBC within the agreed closing time, the final state of the transaction is determined as’ presumed failure’, and Networked will send the final notice to ICBC; If it is found that the deduction has been made, the ICBC system will directly correct it according to this notice, and the deducted money will be immediately returned to the consumer account, and the consumer can pay again. " The relevant person in charge of the network said.
"If the clearing technology can’t keep up, it will be difficult for payment institutions to carry out business innovation on the client side, and the emergence of network connection has a decisive impact on the reform of third-party payment business model." Zhao Wei said that the primary task of the network now is to continue to promote the "broken direct connection" and prevent and resolve various risks brought by the "direct connection" model. While doing a good job of auxiliary supervision, the future network can consider using its own advantages to become a platform to support the innovation and development of the payment industry and make people’s e-wallets safer and better to use.
Zhao Wei introduced that a fast payment system called "Fast Revolution" was launched in Hong Kong in September this year. The highlight was the mutual transfer between Octopus, Alipay and Tenpay. "The establishment of the network link will help promote interoperability across payment platforms and guide the coordinated development of non-bank and bank payment systems. After accessing the network, there is no obstacle to the mutual transfer of accounts between payment institutions at the technical level. Whether and when it can be landed requires the efforts and promotion of all parties. " Zhao Wei said. (Reporter Ge Mengchao)
(Original title: After accessing the network, the industry ecology among online payment institutions will become more balanced, the payment scenarios will become more abundant, and customers will have new experiences-making e-wallets safer)