The Zhitong Finance App learned that Orient Securities released a research report saying that consumer recovery is expected to catalyze payment business flexibility, and that companies in the industry can also expand new revenue curves by helping micro, small and medium-sized merchants accelerate digital transformation. In addition, the continued promotion of industry supervision provides a standards-compliant business environment for merchant services and billing companies. It is recommended to focus on companies involved in third-party payment receipt services: Xinguodu (300130.SZ), New Continent (000997.SZ), La Cala (300773.SZ), Transfer Card (09923), Hailian Jinhui (002537.SZ), Cuiwei Co., Ltd. (603123.SH), and Rendong Holdings (002647.SZ).
The main views of Orient Securities are as follows:
Third-party payments: Profits are expected to improve marginally.
(1) Industry level: In terms of bank card receipts, the transaction volume and transaction scale of bank non-cash payment business showed a long-term growth trend; in terms of mobile payment receipts, the scale of mobile payment business continued to grow until 2022, and the share of electronic payment business continued to rise. (2) Enterprise level: The liberalization of epidemic control catalyzes a recovery in gross margin. In recent years, the overall billing scale of receipt vendors has continued to grow. In 2022, changes in the macro environment had a great impact on China's offline consumer market, and the billing scale of La Cala and the New World shrank. However, with the liberalization of epidemic control and the expansion of the overall scale of the payment industry, the scale of receipt vendors is expected to return to a growth trajectory. And with the liberalization of epidemic control, channel partner sharing is expected to gradually return to pre-epidemic levels, and the gross margin of the billing business of leading billing companies is also expected to pick up.
The refund of liquidation funds has been completed, the rectification of the platform economy has been completed, and the normalization of industrial supervision continues to advance.
Third-party payment companies such as LaCala, Xindeng, Cuiwei Co., Ltd. and Xinguodu announced solutions to the situation where standard merchant transactions use preferential merchant transaction rates to be uploaded to the settlement network. From the announcement disclosing the situation, the relevant incident has been resolved, and the related profit and loss has been included in the 2022 report. The normalization of payment industry supervision will continue to advance in 2022, and the development of industry standards will be further consolidated. Furthermore, most of the outstanding problems in the financial business of platform enterprises have been rectified. In the future, relevant departments will implement financial policies and measures to promote the healthy development of the platform economy, and support and encourage platform enterprises to continue improving financial inclusiveness.
Digital yuan has broad application prospects, and payment vendors are expected to become an important part of the ecosystem.
The digital yuan is expected to increase business volume and bring hardware upgrade requirements to enterprises. On the one hand, billing service providers with a digital yuan first-mover advantage will increase their share of their offline point resources. Leading billing companies such as La Cala have completed system connections with the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China and all six major state-owned banks that issue digital yuan; furthermore, digital yuan payments will also drive POS iterations. The pilot and promotion of digital yuan requires upgrades to the digital yuan payment module and “dual offline payment” function.
Risk warning:Regulatory risk; macro risk; risk of falling third party payment rates; risk of increased competition.