Xiaomi bracelet teams up with Alipay: more hype than practicality?

Xiaomi bracelet teams up with Alipay: more hype than practicality?


On April 2, Huami Technology, a Xiaomi ecological chain company and developer of Xiaomi wristband, announced a strategic cooperation with Alipay. It is understood that after the cooperation, when the user's Xiaomi wristband and mobile Alipay client are bound, once the wristband is close to the phone, the payment can be completed directly by putting on the wristband without entering the payment password.
Xiaomi Mi Band and Alipay have attracted the attention of the industry, with various praises such as "the first wearable payment" and "the wristband can also be used for payment". What does the marriage of Xiaomi Mi Band and Alipay mean? Is it a major innovation? Where is the future of wearable payment going? These questions need to be analyzed in depth to understand the truth behind the marriage between the two.
It's unnecessary and the concept is more like hype.
In the cooperation between Xiaomi wristband and Alipay, Xiaomi wristband actually plays the role of USB shield, verifying the validity of wristband and the identity of user through Bluetooth communication. That is, after Xiaomi wristband is bound to personal identity, users can save the process of entering payment password, which is the only highlight for users.
In fact, Alipay already has a similar function. In Alipay, you can enable the "small amount without password payment" function, so that when paying small amounts, you can pay directly without entering a password. The maximum daily limit for "small amount without password payment" is 1,000 yuan, and the default is 200 yuan.
In July last year, Alipay launched the fingerprint payment function. Users can enter their fingerprints in the phone settings, turn on the fingerprint password, and then pass a series of verifications before they can turn on fingerprint payment. Once turned on, users no longer need to enter cumbersome digital passwords when shopping and transferring money in the Alipay wallet. They can pay by simply swiping their fingers on the fingerprint sensor located on the HOME button.
In other words, there is almost no difference between Alipay's "small amount no-password payment" and "fingerprint payment" functions and the functions realized by Xiaomi wristband payment. Xiaomi wristband payment is more like a superfluous move. For Xiaomi and Alipay, this marriage has no practical value, and is more focused on marketing concept hype to attract the audience's attention. For Xiaomi, it can use the gimmick of payment to sell wristbands, especially in the current situation of increasingly homogeneous competition among wristbands. The addition of payment functions means one more concept that can be hyped; for Alipay, it can hype the concept of "wearable device payment", just like its previous hype of "fingerprint payment", "sound wave payment" and "face payment", which can promote its technical strength.
In the payment scenario of Xiaomi wristband, Xiaomi wristband is just a U shield, and the real payment is still completed through Alipay software. From this perspective, Xiaomi wristband does not have payment function at all. Some media call Xiaomi wristband "the first wristband that can pay", which can be said to be a big mistake. In fact, the first wristband with payment function is the Swipe wristband. With the embedded Yikatong chip, the Swipe wristband can not only realize payment in buses, subways and taxis, but also in all consumer online stores supported by Yikatong, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, McDonald's, KFC, cinemas, etc. The only drawback is that the Swipe wristband currently only supports Beijing Yikatong, and it may be expanded to more cities in the future.
Caught in plagiarism scandal again, will the future payment trend be hardware payment?
From the marriage of Xiaomi wristband and Alipay, we can see that the simple wristband binding has been hyped up as a wearable device payment, which is obviously an exaggeration. As we all know, Xiaomi wristband entered the market as a wristband of Huami Technology, and its biggest killer is the low price. However, consumers now care not only about low prices, but also the functions and experience of wristbands. At this time, Xiaomi wristbands with only basic functions cannot attract consumers' attention. By cooperating with Alipay, Xiaomi wristbands have transformed into "wristbands that can pay", which undoubtedly adds a gimmick.
However, this also caused it to be involved in "plagiarism" again. As far as I know, the Shua Shua bracelet is the first smart bracelet to launch a payment function. It held a press conference as early as January. Moreover, it is a hardware payment. Users do not need to take out their mobile phones and open the software to complete the payment of buses, subways or restaurants with the bracelet. When the Shua Shua bracelet was first launched on JD.com on March 9, the first batch of goods was sold out in just 1 minute and 50 seconds. The "payment bracelet" made it stand out from the homogeneous bracelets and also attracted the attention of other smart bracelet manufacturers, including Xiaomi bracelet. This may be the reason that pushed Xiaomi bracelet to imitate and launch the so-called payment function.
Xiaomi's wristband, which only acts as a USB shield in payment, is packaged as a "payable wristband". I wonder what Xiaomi is trying to do? From the perspective of the development of mobile payment, hardware payment is replacing software payment and becoming the future trend. Among them, Apple has received the most attention. Apple launched Apple Pay in October last year, which allows users to complete payments with hardware by implanting NFC near-field payment technology in the iPhone. Especially after the launch of Apple Watch, users only need to pair the iPhone with the Apple Watch, and as long as the Apple Watch is awakened, they can double-click the side button without entering a password to easily complete the payment. This is considered to have a revolutionary impact on mobile payments.
The swipe bracelet mentioned above also uses hardware payment. If you wear a swipe bracelet, you don't have to look for the subway card in your bag when you take the subway. You only need to use the bracelet to scan and you can swipe the card to enter the station. At present, there are two main ways of mobile payment. One is software payment, represented by Alipay and WeChat Pay, and the two are fighting each other; the other is hardware payment, mainly NFC payment promoted by UnionPay and operators, which implants NFC chips in the hardware to complete the payment. Judging from the current development situation, although software payment is in full swing, hardware payment, which is simpler and faster, has the potential to catch up, and it is also a complete closed-loop model of the O2O model.
Although the marriage of Xiaomi bracelet and Alipay is more hype than substance, it also indicates that smart hardware is undergoing a reshuffle, and only products with more technological innovations and special features can truly win out in the fierce competition.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.

<<:  Domestic operating systems: How can small companies with only a few hundred employees compete?

>>:  Can Microsoft Surface 3 compete with Apple iPad to the end?

Recommend

Is event planning and promotion really as simple as you think?

[Introduction] Recently, due to the impact of the...

Seven things you need to know about Google's reorganization

[[144912]] Google, the world's largest Intern...

7 essential promotion skills for operators! Did you know?

01 Promotion skills For operations personnel, whe...

How to improve ROI? Internet marketing combination methodology!

This article will focus on the general Internet m...

Case analysis: How to use video information flow in the e-commerce industry?

As the trend of short videos continues to deepen,...

Why do early products need seed users?

When it comes to the concept of seed users , I be...

How to promote your App without spending a penny?

In the process of dividing up channel resources a...

Advertising suggestions during the epidemic period!

During this special Spring Festival holiday, the ...