Text: Recently, a piece of news has aroused widespread concern in the society: the central bank officially approved Huawei's Xunlian Smart Pay to change its name to Petal Pay!This is a major adjustment of Huawei's payment business in the HarmonyOS ecosystem. What exactly is Petal Payment?Can it compete with WeChat and Alipay?What are its highlights and difficulties?This article will unveil the mystery of petal payment for you from the following aspects.
First of all, we need to understand the ** and background of petal payment. Petal Pay was not created from scratch by Huawei, but was acquired through the acquisition of a company that already had a payment license. The company was founded in June 2013 as a subsidiary of ZTE Software, which was later acquired by Zhengtong and then by Huawei. In March 2021, Huawei completed the wholly-owned acquisition of Xunlian Zhipay and officially owned the payment license. In October 2020, Huawei applied for the trademark of Petal Payment. In June 2022, the trademark of Petal Pay was registered. On October 13, 2023, the central bank agreed to change the name of Xunlian Zhipay to Petal Pay.
Why is Huawei doing this?There are two reasons for this: one is to save resources and avoid a cumbersome application process;The second is to avoid risks and avoid head-on conflicts with WeChat and Alipay.
Secondly, we need to understand the positioning and goal of Petal Payment. Petal Pay is not to compete with WeChat and Alipay for the existing mobile payment market, but to open up a new payment market in new scenarios. PetalPay is a full-scenario, cross-terminal, and innovative payment platform based on the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
It can support payment on a variety of devices such as mobile phones, watches, and cars, as well as the touch payment of digital yuan. It can be seamlessly connected with various applications and services in the HarmonyOS system to achieve a closed business loop. For example, in the car scenario, users can complete services such as refueling, parking, and car washing through petal paymentIn the smart screen scenario, users can complete services such as TV shopping, ** membership, and game recharge through Petal Pay;In the smart wearable scenario, users can complete services such as health management, sports check-in, and transportation through petal payment.
Petal Pay can also provide more value and support to partners. Petal Pay not only provides payment functions, but also provides services such as fund settlement, automatic account distribution, and marketing empowerment to help partners improve operational efficiency and revenue. Petal Pay also has in-depth cooperation with partners from all walks of life to expand more payment scenarios under the HarmonyOS ecosystem, including express logistics, smart e-commerce, travel and accommodation, recharge and payment, car owner services, catering and supermarkets, ** mutual entertainment, finance and insurance, etc.
Finally, let's understand the advantages and challenges of Petal Payments. The advantage of Petal Pay is that it can provide more convenience and value to users and partners, creating a new payment experience. The challenge for Petal Pay is that it also needs to make more efforts and improvements in marketing, technological innovation, security compliance, and more.
On the one hand, the development of Petal Pay depends on the popularity of the HarmonyOS system and the acceptance of users. At present, the HarmonyOS system has a certain influence in the domestic market, but it still faces many uncertainties in the international market, such as US sanctions, European regulation, and competition in other countries. If the HarmonyOS system can't gain enough market share globally, then Petal Pay will also be restricted.
On the other hand, the innovation ability of Petal Pay needs to be improved and verified. At present, Petal Pay has mainly made some improvements and expansions on the existing payment technology and model, and has not proposed any disruptive innovations. Moreover, Petal Pay has not yet shown obvious advantages and characteristics in some emerging payment fields, such as digital currency, blockchain, biometrics, etc. If Petal Pay can't continue to innovate and break through, then it will be difficult for it to stay ahead of the fierce competition.
In addition, the security and compliance of Petal Pay also faces some risks and challenges. As a service related to user privacy and property security, Petal Pay must ensure the stability and security of its system and prevent any failures or vulnerabilities. At the same time, Petal Pay must also comply with the laws and regulations of various countries and regions, especially in anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, data protection, etc. If Petal Pay does not effectively solve these problems, then it may be resisted or penalized by users.
To sum up, the renaming of Huawei's payment institution to Petal Pay is a major adjustment of Huawei's payment business in the HarmonyOS ecosystem. Petal Pay is not to compete directly with WeChat and Alipay, but to open up a new payment market in new scenarios. Petal Pay has its own characteristics and advantages, as well as its own problems and challenges. We look forward to Petal Pay to bring us a better payment experience and service.