Internet finance, is the use of Internet technology and mobile communication technology and a series of modern information technology technology to realize the financing of a new financial model. In this mode, the market information asymmetry is very low, the supply and demand of funds can be directly docked through the network, transaction costs are greatly reduced.
For the emergence of such an emerging concept, most people are excited and ecstatic, so much so that anything with a little bit of the Internet and financial epithets are called Internet finance, a lot of discussion on Internet finance, but few people come forward to make a systematic classification. Although Xie Ping, deputy general manager of China Investment Corporation, analyzed the definition of Internet finance and the three core parts of payment mode, information processing and resource allocation in his "Research on Internet Finance Model" in August 2012, he only analyzed mobile banking and p2p financing mode. Recently, some people in the industry also take crowdfunding, bitcoin and balance treasure as separate modes of internet finance with different categorization instructions. However, with the continuous innovation in the field of Internet finance, as well as the deepening of social understanding of Internet finance, some of the current social definitions and mode classification is still difficult to fully cover the current state of development of Internet finance.
In order to make a clear definition of the mode of Internet finance, the Softbank Internet Finance Laboratory began in 2012, through continuous research visits to enterprises in the field of Internet finance, in-depth analysis of Internet finance-related information, and Internet financial innovation products, phenomena, and careful research, and finally systematically sorted out the third-party payment, p2p online lending, big data finance, Crowdfunding, information technology financial institutions, Internet financial portals and other six major Internet financial model, and by Luo Mingxiong on April 21, 2013 held the "Tsinghua Financial Week Internet Finance Forum" first proposed.
Based on the recent phenomenon of Internet finance, in order to better exchange the results of the Softbank Internet Finance Laboratory research with the industry to discuss the phenomenon based on Internet finance and have a certain business model is divided into six major models, and one by one to briefly analyze, in order to provide you with.
1, third-party payment
Third-party payment (third-party
payment) in a narrow sense refers to the strength and credibility of non-banking institutions, with the help of communications, computers and information security technology, the use of major banks to sign a contract with the way in which the user and the bank payment and settlement system between the establishment of a connection between the electronic payment model.
According to the definition of non-financial institution payment service given by the central bank in 2010 in the Measures for the Administration of Payment Services of Non-Financial Institutions, third-party payment in a broad sense refers to the network payment, prepaid card, bank card acquiring as well as other payment services determined by the People's Bank of China provided by non-financial institutions as the payment intermediary of the payee and the payer. Third-party payment has not only limited to the initial Internet payment, but has become a comprehensive online and offline coverage, application scenarios are more rich in comprehensive payment tools.
From the point of view of development path and user accumulation, the operation mode of third-party payment companies in the market can be categorized into two main types:
One type is the independent third-party payment mode, which means that the third-party payment platform is completely independent of e-commerce websites, and does not bear the function of guaranteeing the payment, and only provides users with payment products and payment system solutions, typified by Fast Money, Ebay, Huipay, Lakala, and so on. Lakala is a typical representative. Easy Pay, for example, initially based on the gateway model, vertical payment for the industry, and then the transformation of information technology in the traditional industry as an opportunity, with its own deep understanding of the specific industry, tailored to the entire electronic payment solutions.
The other type is to Alipay, Paypal, relying on its own b2c, c2c e-commerce site to provide security function of the third-party payment model. The payment is temporarily hosted by the platform and the platform notifies the seller of the arrival of the payment and delivery; in this type of payment mode, the buyer buys goods on the e-commerce site, uses the account provided by the third-party platform to make payment for the goods, and after the buyer inspects the goods and confirms them, he can notify the platform of the payment to the seller, and at this time, the third-party payment platform then transfers the payment to the seller's account.
Third-party payment companies mainly have revenue sources such as transaction fees, interest on industry user funds credit and service fee income and interest on deposited funds.
In comparison, the independent third-party payment stands on the b (business) end, the guarantee mode of the third-party payment platform stands on the c (individual consumer) end, the former indirectly covers the customer's user base through the service of business customers, the latter penetrate the industry by virtue of the advantages of user resources.
The rise of third-party payments inevitably brings challenges to banks in the area of settlement rates and corresponding electronic/virtual currencies. The relationship between third-party payment platforms and commercial banks has gradually shifted from initial full cooperation to both competition and cooperation. As third-party payment platforms move towards the front-end of the payment process and gradually get involved in financial services such as funds, insurance and other personal finance, banks' intermediary business is being continuously eroded by them. In addition, by utilizing the complete information on customers' purchases, payments and settlements accumulated in their systems, third-party payment companies can provide high-quality and convenient credit and other financial services for their customers at very low costs in conjunction with relevant financial institutions. At the same time, payment companies have begun to penetrate the credit card and consumer credit sectors. The business overlap between third-party payment institutions and commercial banks has been expanding, gradually forming a certain competitive relationship with commercial banks. In the future, when the third-party payment institutions can be further liberalized in financial regulation, it can have a unique bank has the "account" rights and interests, then bring the bank is not only the "balance of the treasure" pilot-style competition, but a full range of competition in the industry.
July 2013, the central bank issued a new batch of payment licenses, payment license holders have reached 250 companies. Under license regulation, the third-party payment field will be more of a competition among giants in the future, including market-forming giants like Alipay, Fast Money and Ebay on the one hand, and SinaPay, telecom operator payments and possible payment platforms of Sinopec and PetroChina relying on their own huge resources on the other. With the increasing number of players in the payment industry, there is less and less differentiation in banking channels, gateway products and market services, and the products of payment companies will tend to be homogenized, which means that third-party payment companies need to keep looking for new performance growth points. Mobile payment, in-depth customized services in niche industries, cross-border payment, and convenient life services will become new competitive areas, and having their own unique competitiveness and special channel resources will become the chips for many third-party payment companies to survive and compete.
2, p2p network lending platform
p2p (peer-to-peer
lending), i.e., peer-to-peer credit. p2p network lending refers to the third-party Internet platform for the matching of capital borrowing and lending parties, the need to borrow the crowd can be found through the website platform with the ability to lend and willing to lend based on certain conditions. The people who need to borrow can use the website platform to find the people who have the ability to lend and are willing to lend based on certain conditions, which helps the lender to diversify the risk by sharing a borrowing amount with other lenders, and also helps the borrower to choose attractive interest rate conditions in the sufficiently comparable information.
P2P platforms are primarily monetized by charging one-time fees from borrowers as well as valuation and administrative fees from investors. The interest rates for loans are determined either by lenders bidding for them or by the platforms providing reference rates based on the creditworthiness of the borrower and the level of interest rates offered by banks.
By no entry threshold, no industry standards, no institutional supervision, there is no strict definition of the concept of p2p lending, and its mode of operation has not yet been fully finalized. At present there have been the following operation mode, one is purely online mode, this type of mode typical platforms are pat loan, joint loan, everyone loan (part of the business), etc., which is characterized by the capital lending activities are carried out through the online, not combined with the offline audit. Usually these companies take measures to audit the borrower's qualifications through video authentication, check bank statements, identity authentication, etc.; the second is the combination of online and offline mode, this type of mode is represented by Yilong Loan. After the borrower submits a loan application online, the platform adopts a household survey through agents in the city to audit the borrower's creditworthiness and repayment ability. In addition, the debt transfer model represented by Yixin is still in question, this model is the company as an intermediary to the borrower screening, lending in the name of an individual and then transfer the debt to the financial investors.
From the point of view of the characteristics of p2p, it reduces the degree of information asymmetry in the market to a certain extent, and will play a certain role in promoting the marketization of interest rates. Due to its low participation threshold and low channel cost, it has expanded the financing channels of the society to a certain extent. However, from the current point of view, p2p lending is temporarily difficult to shake the bank's dominant position in the field of credit, and can not cause a fundamental impact on the bank. p2p is mainly targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises and ordinary individual users, most of which are the bank's "abandonment" of the customer, credit is relatively poor, the amount of loans is relatively low, the collateral is insufficient, and the credit rating system of the central bank for the time being, because the central bank personal credit report system is not available. Because the central bank's personal credit system is not open to p2p enterprises for the time being, resulting in p2p low efficiency of loan review, the customer's single contribution rate is small, as well as the probability of approval of the low status quo, and a lot of foreign credit loans, because of credit review and collection costs are high, a lot of p2p platforms, the rate of bad debt has been high.
According to the incomplete statistics of the home of online lending, the current national active p2p online lending platform is about 800, according to the understanding of the recent platform related to the planning and construction of the situation, is expected to reach about 1,500 at the end of 2013. From the current overall p2p industry, the first entrants because there is a certain degree of visibility and investor accumulation, relative to a large number of investors, more than a lack of quality credit customers; and for some of the new on-line platforms, because of the lack of brand awareness and investor trust, or forced to choose some virtual high-interest rate mark to attract investors, or relying on the resources of the offline cooperation of the microfinance, guarantee companies Some of the scale of the standard for the size of the funds or time period of the split, in order to form a certain volume of transactions as soon as possible, in order to form a virtuous cycle.
p2p online lending platform is still in the cultivation period, the user cognitive degree is insufficient, the wind control system is not sound, is the main obstacle to the development of p2p industry. A small number of platforms run away from the information also brought bad influence to the industry, most of them are holding the mentality of fishing and running, relying on high rate of return to cheat investors' money in the platform online not long time, and very few because of the real mismanagement and closure. Therefore, can not be because of a few black sheep of the bad behavior to completely deny an industry, but to gradually establish the record system as well as the relevant capital supervision at the same time, to increase the real illegal fraud to crack down.
With the Internet financial fire, entrepreneurial enthusiasm, many p2p lending platform if you want to win in the competition, on the one hand, is to accumulate enough borrowing, lending groups, on the other hand, to establish a good reputation, to ensure that the customer's capital security. With the strengthening of the regulation of p2p platform, the platform funds to the bank trusteeship, the platform itself is not involved in the flow of funds is an inevitable trend. In addition, with the third-party payment platform and e-commerce platform to cooperate with the use of the Internet accumulated big data to identify risks, as well as each p2p online lending platform *** enjoy the information of borrowers and lenders, the establishment of a nationwide borrowing records and personal credit will be the direction of the development of the p2p online lending and will further accelerate the pace of interest rate marketization.
3, big data finance
Big data finance refers to the collection of massive unstructured data, through its real-time analysis, can provide Internet financial institutions with a full range of customer information, through the analysis and mining customer transactions and consumption information to master the customer's consumption habits, and accurately predict customer behavior, so that financial institutions and financial service platforms in marketing and risk control Targeted. The financial service platform based on big data mainly refers to the financial services carried out by e-commerce enterprises with massive data. The key to big data is the ability to quickly obtain useful information from a large amount of data, or the ability to quickly realize cash from big data assets, so the information processing of big data is often based on cloud computing. At present, the operation mode of the big data service platform can be divided into the platform mode represented by Ali microfinance and the supply chain finance mode represented by Jingdong and Suning.
Ali Microfinance carries out financial services in the form of "closed process + big data", and issues unsecured credit loans and accounts receivable mortgages with a single amount of less than 50,000 yuan by virtue of an electronic system that approves the credit status of the borrower, which is a very good complement to the bank's credit. Ali Financial currently only counts and uses its own data, and will identify the authenticity of the data and judge false information. Ali Financial through its huge cloud computing capabilities and dozens of excellent modeling team of a variety of models for the Ali Group merchants, shopkeepers, when calculating its credit limit and the number of its accounts receivable, relying on the e-commerce platform, Alipay and Ali Cloud, to achieve the closed operation of the customer, funds and information, on the one hand, effectively reduces the risk factors, and at the same time really do a minute of lending. Jingdong Mall, Suning's supply chain financial model is to e-commerce as the core business, the future earnings of cash flow as a guarantee, to obtain bank credit, to provide loans for suppliers.
Big data can be verified and assessed through the massive data, increase the risk of controllable line and management efforts, timely detection and resolution of possible risk points, for the regularity of the risk of occurrence of accurate grasp, will promote the financial institutions of more in-depth and thorough analysis of data needs. Although banks have a lot of payment flow data, but the departments do not cross, the data can not be integrated, the model of big data finance prompted banks to start the effective use of deposited data. Big data will drive financial institutions to innovate their brands and services, to achieve refined services, to personalize their customers, to use data to develop new predictive and analytical models, and to enable the analysis of customer consumption patterns to improve customer conversion rates.
The big data finance model is widely used in e-commerce platforms to finance loans to platform users and suppliers, from which the interest on the loans as well as the corporate revenue from the smooth supply chain can be obtained. With the improvement of big data finance, enterprises will pay more attention to the user's personal experience and personalized financial product design. In the future, the competition between big data financial enterprises will exist in the scope of data collection, data authenticity identification and data analysis and personalized services.
4, crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is broadly defined as mass funding or crowd funding, which refers to the mode of raising project funds from netizens in the form of group purchasing + pre-purchasing. The original intention crowdfunding is to use the characteristics of the Internet and sns communication, so that entrepreneurial enterprises, artists or individuals to the public to show their creativity and projects, to strive for everyone's attention and support, and then get the required financial assistance. The operation mode of crowdfunding platforms is more or less the same - individuals or teams in need of funds hand over their project plans to crowdfunding platforms, and after relevant audits, they can set up their own pages on the platforms' websites, which can be used to introduce their projects to the public. There are three rules of crowdfunding: one is that each project must set a funding goal and the number of days to raise funds; the second is that within a set number of days, to reach the target amount of success, the initiator can get the funds; the project funding failed to get all the funds back to the supporters; the third is that crowdfunding is not a donation, and all the supporters must be equipped with the corresponding return. Crowdfunding platform will take a certain percentage of service fees from the successful fundraising projects.
Previously, some people have predicted that crowdfunding mode will become another channel of enterprise financing, for the domestic ipo gates are closed, the road of enterprise listing and financing more and more difficult to go to the status quo will provide another solution, that is, through the crowdfunding mode of fundraising. However, from the point of view of the actual crowdfunding platform in China, because of the limitation of the number of shareholders and the provisions of public fundraising, more innovative products are pre-sale and market publicity platforms in China, represented by "name time", and there are also "Amoy dream network", There are also dream realization platforms for creative projects in the humanities, film and television, music and publishing, as well as fundraising platforms for micro public welfare, as represented by "Tao Meng Net" and "Chasing Dreams Net". Internet knowledge-based community pilot - Luo Zhenyu, as the main speaker of the self-media video talk show "Luo Zhusi", his August 9, 2013, 5,000 200 yuan / person two-year membership account, sold out in six hours, also called one of the successful cases of crowdfunding model, but it is difficult to have a certain degree of replicability
Since the middle of 2013, a number of entrepreneurial service platforms for seed and angel stage, represented by Venture Capital Circle and Angels Gateway, have come into people's view with a "crowdfunding" model, which is a good way to undertake the understanding of crowdfunding's original intent, but because of the difficulty in judging the merits of the projects and the extreme uncertainty of the returns, it has only remained in the crowdfunding mode. However, because of the difficulty of judging the merits of the projects and the great uncertainty of the return rate, it only stays in a small number of angel investors, investment organizations and a few people who invest for fun, and the amount involved is relatively small.
Crowdfunding is still in a relatively quiet stage compared with the lively p2p. At present, the domestic regulations on public fund-raising and especially easy to step on the red line of illegal fund-raising makes crowdfunding equity system in the country's slow development, it is difficult to do big and strong in the country, the short term impact on the financial industry and corporate finance is very limited.
From the industry development point of view, the current development of crowdfunding sites to avoid the year group-buying sites due to the operation mode and content of the same, showing a swarm of the rise, and a large number of the downfall of the situation. This requires crowdfunding site operations reflect their own differentiation, highlighting their own vertical characteristics.
5, information technology financial institutions
The so-called information technology financial institutions, refers to the use of information technology, the traditional operation process transformation or restructuring, to achieve the operation and management of a comprehensive electronic banking, securities and insurance financial institutions. Financial informatization is one of the development trends of the financial industry, while information-based financial institutions are the product of financial innovation. From the perspective of the financial industry as a whole, the bank's information technology construction has been in the industry's leading level, not only has the international leading financial information technology platform, built by the self-service banking, telephone banking, cell phone banking and Internet banking constitutes the three-dimensional service system of e-banking, but also the information technology of the masterpiece - data centralization project in the industry The company is also a leader in the industry with the data centralization project, which is a major step in information technology.
At present, some banks are building their own e-commerce platforms, and from the bank's perspective, the core value of e-commerce is to increase user stickiness and accumulate real and credible user data, so that the bank can rely on its own data to explore user needs. CCB has launched "Sunrong Business", and CBI has launched "Jiaobo Hui" and other financial service platforms, all of which are powerful manifestations of bank informatization. ICBC's e-commerce platform is also expected to be online around New Year's Day 2014, as no Internet gene banks flock to promote e-commerce platform, what is the purpose?
From the business model, the traditional bank loans are process-oriented, fixed, banks from the perspective of cost savings and risk control is more inclined to target large institutions for service, through information technology, can alleviate or even solve the problem of asymmetric information, for the bank and small and medium-sized enterprises to build a platform for direct cooperation, enhance the function of the financial institutions to serve the real economy. But more importantly, the bank through the construction of e-commerce platform, and actively open up the bank's various departments of the data silo, forming a "net banking + financial supermarket + e-commerce" of the trinity of the Internet platform to cope with the wave of Internet finance and challenges.
Informatization of financial institutions from another very intuitive point of view to understand, is through the information technology of financial institutions, so that we do not have to run to the bank to remit money, speculation in the stock market do not have to go to the business hall, the phone or the Internet can buy insurance, although this is what we have now taken for granted the life of the financial institutions are built on the basis of the development of Internet technology, and information technology transformation brought about by the convenience. The convenience. In the future, the traditional financial institutions in the era of Internet finance, more is, how to faster and better make full use of the Internet and other information technology, and relying on its own strong financial strength, high brand trust, talent focus, perfect risk control system and other advantages, as a category of the Internet financial model to deal with non-traditional financial institutions brought about by the impact of the impact, especially the thinking, speed of the impact.
6, Internet financial portal
Internet financial portal refers to the use of the Internet for the sale of financial products as well as for the sale of financial products to provide third-party service platform. Its core is the "search + price comparison" model, the use of financial products, vertical comparison of financial products, the products of various financial institutions on the platform, the user selects the appropriate financial products through comparison. The diversified and innovative development of Internet financial portals has resulted in the formation of third-party financial institutions that provide high-end financial investment services and financial products, as well as insurance portals that provide insurance product consulting, price comparison and purchase services. This model does not have too much policy risk, because its platform is neither responsible for the actual sale of financial products nor bears any undesirable risks, while the funds do not pass through the intermediary platform at all. Currently in the field of Internet financial portals for credit, wealth management, insurance, p2p and other segments of the distribution of Rong360, 91 financial supermarkets, good loan network, silver rate network, on the grid financial management, big boy network, the home of the network loan and so on.
The biggest value of the Internet financial portal lies in its channel value. Internet finance has diverted customers from the banking, trust and insurance industries and intensified the competition in the above industries. With the gradual arrival of interest rate marketization, with the advent of the Internet financial era, for the demand side of the funds, as long as it can be within a certain period of time, within the range of acceptable costs, the specific money is from ICBC or not, CCB or not, or p2p platforms or microfinance companies, or trust funds, private debt and so on, is no longer so important. Financing to Rong360, good credit network or soft exchange technology financial supermarket, the user does not even need to buy a physical cell phone like in Jingdong, the need to browse one by one the introduction of the goods and detailed comparison of parameters, prices, but more will be put forward their needs, reverse search and comparison. Therefore, when Rong360, good loan network, the soft exchange technology financial supermarket these Internet financial channels to a certain stage of development, has a certain brand and accumulated a considerable amount of traffic, become the Internet financial sector "Jingdong" and "Ctrip" time, it is Became the major financial institutions, small loans, trusts, funds, an important channel, mastered the Internet financial era of the Internet entrance, leading the wind vane of financial product sales.
Because Internet finance is in a period of rapid development, the current classification is only a stage of rough classification, even after the electronic currency, virtual currency is categorized into the third-party payment of this model, the six modes can not be inclusive of such as Bitcoin and other emerging Internet financial innovation products. On the one hand, the Softbank Internet Finance Lab will launch in-depth analysis articles on the six modes in the near future, and will continue to study the latest developments and trends in Internet finance, so as to better interact with colleagues in the industry.
Overall, the emergence of Internet finance not only makes up for the traditional financial institutions represented by the bank service gap, and improve the efficiency of the use of social funds, more critical is the popularization of finance through the Internet, the masses, not only significantly reduce the cost of financing and more close to the people and people text. Its impact on the financial industry is not only the grafting of information technology to financial services, to promote changes in the pattern of financial business and service concepts, and more importantly, to improve the financial function of the whole society. The development and growth of Internet finance will bring a certain impact to the banking industry, but it also brings new opportunities for fund companies, securities companies, insurance companies, trust companies and so on. With the deep development of Internet finance along the direction of the above six models, it will further promote financial disintermediation, challenge the traditional ways and means of financial services, and change the status and power of the parties within the financial industry.
The world of Internet finance is changing rapidly, and a financial revolution is underway. Everything is still unknown, and its specific form will be constantly enriched and perfected, but there is no doubt that Internet finance is changing the traditional financial model by destroying the momentum.