After a year of internal testing, WeChat’s “Payment Score” is officially launched, making consumption more convenient?

After a year of internal testing, WeChat finally launched its own "credit score" - payment score.

WeChat Pay Score was once called Tencent Credit Score. After several service upgrades, it was renamed WeChat Pay Score. Simply put, you can think of the payment score as "Tencent's Sesame Credit Score". This score, which is based on your consumption records, consumption habits, credit records, etc., can be said to represent your "credibility". In a game way, Tencent gives you a "trustworthiness" value based on its understanding of you. A high score means that after "deeply understanding" you, Tencent thinks you are "trustworthy".

However, friends like me who have a payment score of just over 500 should not worry. A low score does not mean that you are "untrustworthy". It may just be because "Tencent does not know you well": for example, you have not bound certain documents, or you do not use WeChat Pay very often. Because my WeChat account is not bound to a real-name document, even if I use it frequently, my score is lower than that of real-name users registered in China.

In other words, binding your real-name information, using WeChat Pay and other related behaviors can improve your payment score. But according to my speculation, in addition to the premise of binding your real-name information, using payment credit services more often may be more practical than using WeChat Pay more often.

And here we need to clarify a misunderstanding. Unlike Sesame Credit and Jiebei, WeChat Pay Credit has no direct connection with WeBank’s loan limit. WeChat Pay Credit is a product launched by Tencent’s Tenpay, but WeBank’s WeBank is a financial product launched by WeBank. The two are not in the same system, so there will be no direct impact.

However, in terms of function, the payment score is quite similar to the Ant Score, and both can provide certain "deposit-free guarantee" services in daily life. In the payment interface of WeChat, WeChat provides five major service categories, including the commonly used deposit-free borrowing, pay-later ride code, and deposit-free hotel services.

In fact, before this, we have more or less experienced WeChat's credit score service: for example, when scanning the code to rent a mobile power bank, there is an option to waive the deposit by credit at the bottom of the rental interface. So in my opinion, the addition of WeChat payment points has not brought much change to daily life, it is just a new way to waive the deposit. After all, the final fee still needs to be paid.

However, compared with Sesame Credit, the coverage of Payment Score still needs to be improved: among the hotel deposit-free services commonly used for business trips, the number of hotels connected to Payment Score is far less than that of Sesame Credit.

Why did Tencent launch the payment points?

Although for us it is just an additional way to avoid deposit, for WeChat or Tencent, the launch of payment points can be said to be a milestone: it marks that there is finally a unified personal credit score system within the WeChat system.

If you have used early shared power banks, you should remember that WeChat users had to top up before using them. As Alipay has been focusing on payment services for many years, it has already launched the Sesame Credit system. So soon after the shared power banks came out, Sesame Credit was connected to the rental system, and together with the password-free payment, a complete use-before-pay process was created.

However, WeChat did not have the concept of credit points at that time. WeChat users who wanted to use shared power banks had to register first and pay a deposit of 100 yuan before they could use them. As the name suggests, the deposit needs to be paid in advance by the user, and the deposit is not universal between different brands. It is obviously not cost-effective to pay a deposit for each brand of power bank, so everyone prefers to use Alipay for operations.

Sharing power banks is just one example. Because WeChat Pay does not have a unified credit score, the number of WeChat Pay users lags behind Alipay in almost all situations where credit is not required. This not only undermines the user activity of WeChat Pay, but also reduces the willingness of merchants to settle in WeChat and access WeChat Pay. Therefore, a personal credit score within the WeChat system is imperative.

In addition to winning back merchants and users, WeChat Pay Points is Tencent's ticket to the personal information credit system. Take the United States, where the personal credit industry is well developed, as an example: There are three mainstream credit reporting agencies in the United States. They each collect personal information, compile their own credit reports and sell them to different agencies. Large and small commercial institutions including banks will choose the credit reports of these three credit agencies for personal credit assessment.

As for China, the only credit reports that can be obtained by institutions of all sizes, apart from the national credit report of the People's Bank of China, are basically the Ant Credit Score of Alipay. The procedures for obtaining the credit report of the People's Bank of China are cumbersome, and every time you check the credit report, it will leave a mark on the report. Obviously, it is not suitable for scenarios such as renting a power bank when going out or taking the subway to work. Lightweight credit reports with commercial backgrounds such as Ant Credit Score are particularly important.

Personal credit reports are inseparable from daily life and consumption, and personal credit will become increasingly important in the future. Credit reports are like an entrance and an admission ticket. Only by launching a unified credit report that can be used commercially can it occupy a place in the future credit system. This is why WeChat Pay Points, although it has few functions, is of great significance.

Payment points are not perfect yet

However, the introduction of payment points also brings some hidden dangers. For example, in terms of personal privacy and property security, some people are skeptical about WeChat payment points.

Let's talk about the old-fashioned issue of personal privacy. Using payment points means Tencent can access your personal real-name information and detailed payment information. Big data is a double-edged sword, with advantages and disadvantages. Although consumption records can be used to endorse personal credit, everyone must have remembered the example of "Cadillac owners often go to bath centers." Whether it is appropriate to hand over your consumption records and consumption habits to commercial organizations for analysis in order to avoid deposits, the outside world has not yet reached a consensus.

Then there is the issue of property security. Unlike Alipay, WeChat itself is an instant messaging tool. In other words, WeChat not only has the risk of account theft, but also has a higher chance of being "blocked". No matter how many functions Alipay has, I believe no one chats on Alipay. As long as it does not involve illegal activities such as money laundering, it will generally not be blocked or suspended. However, WeChat accounts are different. Due to their more complex properties, there is a higher possibility that the account will be restricted. For example, it may be "mistakenly blocked" for some special reasons, or implicated by "bad friends" in the WeChat group, etc., which are unpredictable to some extent.

Because of the various "uncertainties" of WeChat accounts, even though WeChat payment points are easy to use, they also carry some risks. However, I believe WeChat already has a set of feasible methods to ensure the normal operation of payment points and help users avoid risks. After all, for WeChat, payment layout is a long-term battle line, and WeChat's style rarely "drops the ball" in key battles.