The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 283 Paying for the War
As an e-commerce company, Alibaba is naturally interested in electronic payments. It has never engaged in electronic payments before. First, because it lacks the energy and has not yet established a firm foothold in Silicon Valley. Second, it needs to rely on NewPay to empower their business.

But now the status quo is that everyone wants to enter this field. The power of the combination of electronic payment and smart phones is obvious to all. Electronic coupons are issued in the form of WeChat, which is used for brand promotion, marketing activities, discounts, etc. The effect is real.

Just because enterprises cultivate a closer emotional connection with consumers through WeChat public accounts, corporate soft news promotion, corporate regular event notifications, and corporate coupon issuance, etc., electronic payment has played a role of one plus one greater than two in various activities. effect.

Before NewPay did not open QR codes, it only engaged in computer payment and lacked explosive points. It belonged to a field where the cost-effectiveness of input and output was not so high. After NewPay opened up patents, this field is completely different.

First of all, electronic payment is a field that requires a lot of investment. Whether it is the early customer acquisition cost or information security technology and electronic payment license, a lot of resources must be invested to get it started.

Therefore, only Internet companies with a certain scale or companies in traditional industries can do it. For these companies, they have their own payment scenarios.

For example, Microsoft has a series of Internet services that allow users to use their Internet services to pay. After the acquisition of X.com, the deep integration of X.com and MSN, Microsoft only needs to follow the WeChat model. up.

The same is true for Yahoo. Yahoo also has a large number of Internet scenarios. Based on these Internet scenarios, it can first provide users with payment options. For example, Yahoo’s social space provides some additional value-added services. When consumers of these value-added services use Yahoo to pay, Yahoo completely Certain discounts may be given.

Companies that had no idea before began to seriously consider this matter, not to mention companies like Alibaba whose original business and electronic payment business are particularly complementary.

Jack Ma felt from the bottom of his heart that Zhou Xin would not take Alibaba to heart. After all, so many companies were making electronic payment software, and Alibaba was quite insignificant among them.

Moreover, they did not think about how much market share they would occupy when doing electronic payment. They just wanted to get a share in the foreign trade field. They said it was electronic payment, but in essence it was more like supply chain finance.

Huaguo Internet companies will eventually find that finance is the fastest-growing industry, and any Internet company with traffic will start to do loan business.

Take 360 ​​as an example. This kind of antivirus software company is all engaged in finance. The registered capital of 360 Finance expanded from 10 billion to 50 billion, and it surpassed the parent company in less than five years in terms of revenue.

Not to mention the higher echelons of Sina and Baidu, as well as Ali and Tencent at the top.

When Alibaba was also gearing up to get a piece of the mobile payment business, WeChat launched WeChat Pay.

"With Microsoft's announcement of the acquisition of X.com, this has rarely refocused the attention of Wall Street's business elites on the field of electronic payments, and countless investment managers who are speeding among the high-rise office buildings on Wall Street are discussing what is available in the market. Electronic payment companies have investment value.

You must know that Microsoft spent more than 100 billion US dollars to acquire X.com, which made Musk, a once unknown white South African, a real billionaire overnight, and at the same time he became a A focus figure in Silicon Valley, after his past remarks against Newman were exposed, some even gave him the title of South African Newman.

At the same time, Microsoft's acquisition of X.com was compared to Time Warner's acquisition of Quora.

Going back to the previous question, why did no Wall Street investment managers pay attention to electronic payment companies in the past, and no one paid attention to this field, which is obviously full of imagination and potential, but no one explored its value. weird?

You must know that the elites of Wall Street are interested in valuable things, even if it is in Antarctica, the flight to Mary Bird Land the next day is full of elites from Wall Street.

It's very simple, because when the field of electronic payment was still a barren land, there stood a behemoth: NewPay.

I believe you can associate it with Newman as soon as you hear the name, including banners or stands that support NewPay payment can be seen everywhere in our daily life, and you can see NewPay payment when shopping in most offline chain stores. Tempting slogans such as random instant discounts.

Yes, unfortunately, NewPay is related to Newman. It has firmly occupied the No. [-] position in the electronic payment market share from the beginning of its birth, and has hardly encountered any decent opponents from its birth to today.

NewPay is so powerful that Wall Street elites subconsciously believe that all electronic payment companies have no possibility of defeating it. The author once talked about this issue with the investment manager of Merrill Lynch. When NewPay was mentioned, his subconscious reaction was:
'Who would be crazy to challenge NewPay?It's something that takes a lot of effort and doesn't see results. '

Merrill Lynch's investment managers have this attitude, and other elites on Wall Street have a similar attitude. Therefore, NewPay has never faced a decent opponent in a field full of imagination and potential like electronic payment.

Until the emergence of Microsoft, it seemed that Microsoft was irritated by Matrix's acquisition of Apple. It acquired Palm and X.com in succession, and launched an attack on all the mobile Internet related fields that Newman was involved in.

But can Microsoft really pose a threat to NewPay after acquiring X.com?The author is very skeptical, not optimistic at all.

Because NewPay is so powerful and special.

Let us review how NewPay became a behemoth in the field of electronic payment, and how it achieved leapfrog growth.

NewPay was established in 1998. At that time, Newman was still a small person, similar to Musk's small person. After making a popular video game "Angry Birds" that summer, this game was obtained through a verification code after transferring money for the first time. The method of downloading links is here, and this method also gave Newman the idea of ​​making electronic payment software for the first time.

With the emergence of the fist game, NewPay was born as one of the components of the fist game. At the beginning of its birth, both Silicon Valley and Wall Street focused on the fist game. No one realized the meaning and value of electronic payment. .

Or someone realizes it, but it is much less attractive than Riot games.Because Bill Gates stood behind the fist game at that time, yes, it was Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.

Although the full-scale war between Microsoft and Newman has already started, Bill Gates was Newman's earliest die-hard supporter in the early days. After Bill Gates acquired a part of the fist game, Newman invested most of the money he got into NewPay.

The Silicon Valley legend had high hopes for NewPay at the time.However, after the birth of NewPay, the business has been tepid. It is only a supplementary part of Riot Games. Only game lovers will use NewPay to complete the payment. Apart from buying games, NewPay lacks other payment scenarios.

This stalemate was not broken until the emergence of Quora Paid Questions and Answers and Quora Golden Selection. Quora was one of the greatest Internet inventions in the 90s of the last century. It caused Yahoo to decline at an unimaginable speed.

For the first time, the way for Internet users to acquire knowledge has changed from sharing to asking and answering. This historic change has also completely expanded the living space of NewPay. Both Quora and NewPay are companies founded by Newman. Both Quora Paid Q&A and Quora Golden Selection only support NewPay online payment.

This allows NewPay's user base to expand from game enthusiasts to the entire Internet user group, and it will increase with the increase of the Internet user group, because for a new Internet user, Quora is definitely their most friendly starting site.

It is precisely because Quora is so successful that NewPay has quickly become a synonym for electronic payment from a small and unknown company.

During this time period, ebay launched Billpoint, and Citibank launched c2it. None of these electronic payment software threatened NewPay, and they even disappeared in the electronic payment field in just one year.

Because no one could see the importance of electronic payment at that time, ebay and Amazon opened their payment channels to NewPay with almost no thought. speed expansion.

Now we look back at the growth data of NewPay in 1999 and 2000 and we can find that it is growing at a rapid monthly growth rate of more than 50.00%. The statistical caliber here is the transaction volume that occurs through NewPay.

This made it impossible for other electronic payment software to see the hope of surpassing NewPay. By 2001, everyone realized the value of electronic payment.

In particular, Mphone1 has been launched, and electronic payment has become popular offline for the first time. Chain catering brands such as McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, etc. have begun to support offline electronic payment. Electronic payment can often enjoy low-price discounts through activities.

Consumer brands organize various promotional activities through NewPay. Not only does NewPay not need to pay them, but they also have to pay NewPay for advertising and promotion costs.At this point, NewPay has completed the absolute monopoly in the field of electronic payment.

I asked the elites on Wall Street, have you ever thought about fighting NewPay in the field of electronic payment?Their unanimous answer is: the rise of NewPay is an accident of the times, and it is almost impossible for us to invest in an electronic payment company comparable to NewPay.

The core logic behind this answer is: I have this money, why not invest in NewPay.

The reason is simple. Like NewPay in the early days, there is no chance of getting customers at almost zero cost by relying on fist games and Quora.

Quora is a rare opportunity. After Quora, a user who wants to obtain an electronic payment from the market needs to spend at least 20 US dollars, and let him develop the habit of using regular electronic payment software. This number must be multiplied by 2.5, which is 50 US dollars .

A high-frequency user is $50. More importantly, this number is not fixed. The more users there are, the higher the cost of new users will be.

Another point is that these users will gradually become NewPay customers in an environment full of NewPay.

The Washington Daily conducted a survey when X.com was collecting tokens to redeem prizes. They surveyed more than 30.00 winning users, and more than [-]% of them said that they would transfer the money to their NewPay account after receiving the money. More than fifty users expressed similar thoughts.

NewPay is so strong and domineering in the field of electronic payment. It meets the transaction settlement needs of countless online and mobile business innovators around the world.No company can challenge or shake NewPay's position in this field.

Microsoft doesn't look like it's going to work either, because the aging Microsoft is a liability to X.com's corporate image.

We need to clarify a concept, that is, most users of electronic payment are young people under the age of 30. In the eyes of these groups, Microsoft is a product of the last century and a synonym for the past. They and enterprises that need electronic payment The image doesn't match at all.

X.com is much better than Microsoft, but still much worse than NewPay. After X.com was acquired by Microsoft, when the Washington Daily conducted another investigation, I believe the ratio will be higher, because from the perspective of corporate image, Microsoft has For X.com, it is negative equity.

Of course, Microsoft's acquisition of X.com has rekindled the interest of Wall Street investment managers in electronic payments.

why?
Because they realize that they don’t need to defeat NewPay, they just need to have a place in the field of electronic payment, and they can wait for a funder like Microsoft to acquire it.

It is not necessary to be successful in this field to be a profitable business. It is also a profitable business if customers are willing to pay.

Judging from what we know, there are indeed many Internet companies planning to acquire electronic payment companies to announce their entry into the electronic payment field. As for whether NewPay can still maintain its dominance in the electronic payment field in the face of the encirclement and suppression of so many companies. status?
I don't know, but I trust Newman"

This is a report by "Red Herring" after Microsoft acquired X.com. The impact of Microsoft's acquisition of X.com is far greater than the launch of WeChat's payment function.

WeChat’s launch of the payment function is not news at all, and not many people are aware of it except users.

Instead, Microsoft acquired X.com at a valuation of more than 100 billion US dollars, which is full of too many explosive points.

Whether it's Microsoft's all-round attack on Newman, or why X.com is worth more than 100 billion US dollars.

Or if X.com is worth more than 100 billion US dollars, how much is NewPay worth?

There are too many things that can be reported, and you can post a news from any angle, and readers who like to post it will love it.

Official accounts like the Silicon Valley Big Bang have reported at length on the impact of Microsoft’s acquisition of X.com:

"Microsoft declares war on Newman head-on, Newman's end is coming!"

"Bill Gates is in control of the situation, Newman is powerless to parry"

"Tell you why X.com will surpass NewPay from ten angles"

From Microsoft's announcement of the acquisition to the approval of the transaction by Nasdaq, Microsoft's stock price rose by more than 40.00% during the entire period, which shows that the capital market's attitude towards this transaction is positive.

(End of this chapter)