Thoughts on the Investigation and Analysis of the Status of Bank Cards in X City and the Joint Development of Networking

The networking and joint development of the bank card business has played a positive role in improving the acceptance environment of China's bank cards, promoting the faster development of bank card business and improving the quality of people's lives. However, in small and medium-sized cities with underdeveloped economy, due to the small scale of bank card acceptance environment, the concept of consumption is lagging behind, the technical conditions such as the Internet are backward, the scale of merchant enterprises is small, and the development of bank card business is relatively slow. Therefore, the current bank card is seized. It is imperative for the network to unite this opportunity to speed up the construction of bank card acceptance environment, expand the function and business scope of bank cards, and overcome the unfavorable factors in small and medium-sized cities. Around this theme, we recently conducted a survey on the status quo and networking of the bank card business in Xinyu City.

I. Current status of bank card business

Xinyu is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangxi with a total population of 1.08 million and an urban population of 300,000. The city's bank card business has experienced more than a decade of development. By the end of March 2003, there were 6 card issuers, with a total of 284,857 cards issued, including 271,149 debit cards, 13,666 credit cards, and 44 international credit cards. The balance of RMB deposits in bank card accounts was 575.57 million yuan, and 247 merchants were special merchants. All financial institutions installed 15 ATMs and 225 sales terminals. In the first quarter of 2003, the number of transactions in the city was 332,000, and the transaction amount was 238.481 million yuan, of which 5600 were cards, and the amount of card consumption was 14.06 million yuan, accounting for 0.6% of the total transaction volume, accounting for 1.6% of the total retail sales of social goods in the city. %. The per capita card holding capacity of the city is less than 0.3, and the average per capita card in urban areas is less than one. As can be seen from the above, the bank card business of Xinyu City has a considerable gap between the number and quality of the country's economically developed cities.

In terms of card varieties, the city has formed a series of bank cards with debit cards as the mainstay and supplemented by credit cards. With China's accession to the WTO and the intensification of bank competition, all banks will develop the bank card business as an important measure to develop personal banks and increase the income of the bank's intermediary business. They have launched their own “family” brand series cards, such as Peony Card Series and Jinsui. Card series, Great Wall card series, Dragon card series and Pacific card series and one card.

In terms of card functions, the banks rely on technological advancement and the improvement of the card environment in the process of continuously developing varieties and establishing brands, especially with the launch of telephone banking and online banking, constantly innovating and refining and holding cards. People's life is closer to the functions, such as IP phone functions, booking hotels, high-speed payment, lottery betting, medical registration functions, etc. The card functions are gradually developing in the direction of specialization, diversification, layering and intelligence, and the industries involved. More and more.

In terms of networking, by the end of March 2003, all the issuing banks in the city had completed the upgrading of their networks, software and various terminal equipments in accordance with the requirements of the bank card networking. The ATMs in the city have been realized. Cross-bank and cross-regional transactions are expected to be fully realized at the end of this year.

Second, the main problems exist

The card awareness is not satisfactory. The city's card consumption only accounts for 0.6% of the total transaction volume, accounting for 1.6% of the city's total retail sales of consumer goods, compared with the coastal developed cities. The main reason comes from two aspects: The first is that the degree of convenience is far from the needs of people. Many consumers think that “the password is troublesome”, “the mechanical failure is more”, “the credit card has no cash to save trouble”, etc. The second is the traditional The concept of "two silver goods" also severely restricts the development of the quota card. The number of transactions is small, but the average single transaction amount is large. This shows that the card transaction is limited to some special large-value consumers, ordinary consumption. The small consumer credit card rate is not high, but also indicates that there are a large number of "sleep cards", a large number of people use the bank card only as a tool for deposit and withdrawal and payment.

The reception environment is worrying. Because merchants can't immediately increase the sales revenue by accepting bank cards, they have to spend the cost of returning commissions, which seriously affects the enthusiasm of accepting bank cards. The special merchants that have been developed by various banks have been shrinking, and most of the POS machines placed in the malls have been shelved and even refused to accept credit cards. Less than 10% of the city's more than 200 POS machines are used normally. Some special industries and companies prefer to carry a few boxes of coins toss and toss each day, but they are not interested in using modern electronic money.

The service function is seriously lagging behind. The proportion of card varieties is unbalanced, the development of quota cards is seriously backward, the development of card consumption credit function is insufficient, the overdraft is less, the installment payment is less, and the profit potential is not enough; the bulk consumption such as car purchase, house purchase, travel, ticket purchase, etc. is limited. Traditional cash transactions and transfer transactions still dominate; online banking card service functions are limited, and the security of online payment and the uniformity of payment gateways restrict the function of online cards; refine services and personal services. Less, some free information services and less services designed to establish a close and stable relationship with cardholders; account integration functions and advanced cards have poor coverage for low-level cards, and some card-issuing brands have many different brands. Cardholders are inconvenienced to cardholders because they need to hold several cards of the same brand at the same time.

Technical conditions need to be improved. The survey found that cardholders have insufficient confidence in swiping cards. The most complaints are ATM's operating rate and swallowing rate, the success rate of POS card swiping, the network waiting time is too long, and the security of online payment is not reliable. Especially when the cross-line and off-site equipment use card is wrong, the problem is more complicated, and most of the customers who have experienced such problems are dissatisfied. Sometimes customers lose money in the credit card because of wrong accounts, and they can't get a satisfactory answer when they call the bank. Some interbank transactions are misclassified, the acceptance bank has already initiated a correction for the wrong transaction, and the issuer has not received it, and must wait for manual reconciliation. Some have confirmed the problem between the banks, but they can't immediately return the customers' money, which causes many contradictions between the merchants and the customers.

The management mechanism is not smooth enough. Although all banks have a special card department, the management of these departments still needs to rely on other departments. It only manages some functions of the card business. It does not form the whole process and the whole process from development to use. The accounting and management system of the cost causes the various accounting data of the card to be distorted, failing to reflect the real situation of the business and affecting the decision-making. In addition, the management of the card business and the division of responsibility of the superior and lower-level banks are not very reasonable. This problem is more prominent in the four major state-owned banks and cross-regional management.

The penetration depth of the industry is insufficient. Xinyu City's bank card business has a good penetration of hotels, retail, catering services, and securities. In addition, it also involves insurance, public transport, transportation, education, medical care, post and telecommunications and other utilities, funds and other industries, but the breadth of penetration. And the depth is not enough. Cooperation in other industries such as tourism and real estate needs to be developed, and the vertical and horizontal relationship of industry penetration still needs to be strengthened.

The overall publicity is not good. Nowadays, various banks have used various forms of propaganda such as radio, television, street advertising, and posters. However, in general, there is insufficient investment in propaganda and limited funds, which is quite different from the investment of Western banks in the cost of 30% to 50%. At the same time, there is a lack of propaganda to establish a good overall CI image of the bank, mainly for the promotion of a certain product; to grasp the level of customer psychology and CI creativity needs to be improved; joint promotion is less, each family only focuses on promoting their products. The average user is a bit overwhelmed by all kinds of publicity.

Risk prevention ability is weak. The card business has a short development time, the legal system is not perfect, the cardholder's self-protection and risk awareness are limited, the bank's auditing and monitoring of the card business is insufficient, new varieties, new functions are continuously introduced and some technical reasons, so that risk control exists. Omissions.

III. Acceptance of environmental construction and networking joint development proposals

Hard work and internal strength, vigorously expand the bank card function and acceptance scope, and promote the bank card "one card multi-use."

Vigorously expand the service function of bank cards and realize the "one card multi-use" based on bank cards, which is an important measure and way for the development of bank card business in the development of information technology. To this end, all banks must continue to improve the basic functions of access to cash, shopping and other activities, and actively expand the service functions that are close to the daily work and life needs of residents, and gradually promote the electronic wallet in the fields of fueling, transportation, medical care, pension insurance, communications, etc. The combination and active combination with automatic teller machines, self-service banking, online banking, telephone banking, mobile banking and other new service methods, so that residents really feel the convenience and speed of bank cards anytime, anywhere. In addition, the rural bank card market is almost a blank, and it is also the potential for developing small and medium-sized cities to develop bank card business. Commercial banks should carefully develop the rural bank card business market, which can compensate for the small population and small economic scale of small and medium-sized cities. Insufficient.

Guide the policy, give play to the government's promotion role, and accelerate the pace of bank card acceptance environment construction.

The development of China's bank card industry is at an early stage, especially in small and medium-sized cities with underdeveloped economy. The acceptance of merchants is not increasing, the acceptance environment is rather harsh, and it is necessary to break the bottleneck of bank card acceptance environment construction. Government promotion and policy guidance are very necessary. . First, it is necessary to use administrative means and encourage government merchants to accept bank cards through government tax incentives. It is recommended that merchants who exceed certain sales in retail, catering, hotels, transportation and other industries must accept bank cards, and whether the above-mentioned merchants install POS machines in the scope of annual inspection of merchants; formulate business expenditures and card consumption for industrial and commercial enterprises. And procurement policy measures; it may be considered that the government, financial institutions, and bank card joint organizations jointly set up a special fund for reward cardholders, and regularly draw prizes to encourage card consumption. At the same time, the tax authorities should give certain tax benefits to merchants accepting bank cards. Secondly, in view of the tax evasion phenomenon of many small and medium-sized service enterprises, it is recommended to increase the deployment of tax-controlled POS, and use the serial number of POS documents to monitor the turnover of merchants to prevent the occurrence of tax evasion; Tax control invoices; implement personal taxable income accounts, and incorporate personal income accounts into the bank card system to promote the development of the bank card industry while controlling personal income tax. Third, use the positive guiding role of public opinion propaganda, publicize the achievements in the construction of the bank card industry, popularize the knowledge of financial informationization, enhance the public awareness of card consumption; increase the promotion of investment environment, increase policy transparency, and attract all parties to invest in bank cards. Industrial construction to support local economic development.

Standardize the market, strengthen the coordination services and supervision of the central bank, and avoid vicious competition among banks.

First, strengthen unified planning and management, establish a sound management and interest distribution mechanism, increase the enthusiasm of all parties to participate in the acceptance of market construction and networking, strengthen communication and cooperation with various card-issuing banks, unify development strategies, avoid vicious competition, and accept the environment. The improvement is linked to the vital interests of commercial banks, fully mobilizing and applying the overall synergy to accelerate the networking of bank cards.

Second, it is necessary to strengthen the formulation and implementation of unified business norms and technical standards, improve the business processes of inter-bank transactions, establish a unified notification system for error and error handling, establish a transparent monitoring mechanism for all parties, and establish a special risk fund for error handling to avoid The bank's loss of wrong account, from the interest mechanism, prompts the bank to refund the customer first, and then conducts inquiries and investigations; the construction provides a unified open complaint and error handling business monitoring system to the cardholder.

The third is to maintain the coordination of the People's Bank of China in cross-bank transactions, strengthen inspections, and urge commercial banks to speed up the process of centralized, unified and open systems, and urge all banks to complete standardization on schedule; Give full play to the functions of organization, coordination, supervision and management, use existing resources, adapt to local conditions, and adopt various forms to solve problems encountered in the process of networking.

Unify the deduction rate, stabilize the source of income of commercial banks, and maintain a reasonable deduction rate in the acquiring market.

The merchant deduction rate is the source of income in the acquiring market. There is no deduction rate income, and the construction of the acceptance environment loses the interest base. In the long run, merchants are one of the biggest beneficiaries after the bank card industry has grown to a certain stage. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain a reasonable deduction rate in the acquiring market.

In the formulation of the deduction rate, vicious competition between acquirers should be avoided. When formulating a unified deduction rate, the characteristics of different industries and regions should be fully considered. For example, if you sell a car for sale in a block trade, you can consider adopting the practice of capping the rebate and lowering the charging standard. For some special business industries, such as medical care, taxation, etc., we can consider reducing the rebate rate appropriately. The use of bank cards in these industries is very high, and it is closely related to people's daily lives. Cards should be popularized as soon as possible; for high-end consumer merchants such as hotels and hotels, Deduction rates above average can be set; for cities with underdeveloped economies, deduction rates below the industry average can be set.

Encourage competition, rationalize the distribution mechanism of issuing banks, acquiring banks and specialized service companies, and improve the enthusiasm of commercial banks to accept the acceptance environment.

In the survey, commercial banks generally believe that the current 8:1:1 profit distribution ratio is not reasonable, mainly inclined to the issuing bank. In fact, the issuing bank is not the main builder of the bank card acceptance environment. The construction of the bank card acceptance environment mainly depends on the acquiring bank or the specialized service company. The professional service company's business income also comes from the acquiring bank. Therefore, the profit distribution ratio of bank card interbank transactions should be tilted to the acquiring bank, so that the entire acquiring market has a reasonable income base. This is one of the important measures to break through the bottleneck of bank card acceptance environment construction. In the survey, some commercial banks have clearly expressed their reluctance to participate in the competition of the acquirer. Therefore, we suggest that the current 8:1:1 should be changed to 6:1:3 based on international experience and China’s national conditions. Improve the enthusiasm of the commercial bank construction acceptance environment, and when the acquiring bank needs to outsource the business development and maintenance services, there is sufficient income to pay the service fees of the specialized service company. Only in this way can we truly mobilize banks and various social forces to participate in the construction of the acceptance market, and the source of funds needed to expand the scale of acceptance can be guaranteed.