Research On Economic Law Regulation Of Third-party Internet Payment

The third-party Internet payment industry associated with the development of e-commerce has developed rapidly in recent years; Alipay, Tenpay and other principal third-party enterprises scale up every year at the speed more than one hundred percent. Besides, third-party payment industry is closely related to people’s lives, its development process has direct bearing on the vital interests of every user. It has arouse wide public concern from the start, drawing attention of researchers in different fields.Third-party payment is operated by independent third parties who provide the interface and channel services with bank payment and settlement system, transfer of funds and online payment and settlement services. The main functions of third-party payment are restraining and supervising the parties to the payment, increasing the efficiency of payment and settlement, and safeguarding the stable, rapid and healthy development of e-commerce. In Section3Development of Third-party Payment, the industry development history, and the development of legislation and supervision are summarized.The market access of third-party payment industry is a constituent part of special market access system. In essence, it is an administrative permission system, which is a market access system under which relevant national authorities review the specific production and operation activities carried out by enterprises and other types of economic organizations established directly by members of society, approve them to enter certain markets to engage in production and operation activities if such activities conforms to conditions prescribed by the law. The basis is that the third-party payment system is risky, has a large number of users and broad impact, and may cause disastrous social consequences if something goes wrong. The main issues in the market access system of third-party payment are:fuzzy regulations on foreign equity; fuzzy regulations on access conditions; too much discretionary power of regulatory bodies; lack of specific relief approaches; regulations becoming formalistic, leading the failure to achieve expected results; exit mechanism not scientific, which is difficult to take the functions as supporting measures. For the development of third-party payment industry, the balance of interests principle, power control principle, promotion principle and other guidance principles must be adhered to; the development of market access system of foreign capital must be actively promoted; the regulations shall be optimized, related system shall be innovated and the operability shall be enhanced.As an emerging industry, the third-party payment industry has the basic elements of the bilateral market, which can reflect the characteristics of the bilateral market: the price structure non-neutrality and cross-group network externalities of third-party payment industry. Bilateral market theory indeed can provide a good theoretical guidance for us to understand the third-party payment platform, and useful inspiration for us to rethink the traditional competition theory and policy. Especially in the determination of traditional monopolistic behaviors such as dominant market position, predatory pricing, tying, conspiracy, the specificities of third-party payment market as a bilateral market shall be noted.The precipitation funds in the process of third-party payment refer to the payments for goods of online buyers and sellers retained in the payment platform due to the time difference resulted from sellers’ delivery of goods, goods transport, buyers’ inspection and acceptance, plus the delay in payment or settlement in this process, or the funds retained in the payment platform before and after the online transactions. The precipitation funds shall be classified as liabilities and shall be mainly attributed to the third-party payment institutions. Such a provision is justified, on the grounds that the third-party payment institutions and the commercial banks have deposit contractual relations. As depositors, to enjoy the interest income is the legal right of the third-party payment institutions. In the current environment where most third-party payment enterprises provide services free of charge or at very low rates, the interest income of precipitation funds is the major source of the revenues of third-party payment enterprises. To determine their right to interest may create a favorable economic and policy environment for their development. The existing problems in legal risk response of precipitation funds are:banks for payment provisions are not independent, which is hard to form an effective supervision; information is opaque; the liability provisions are unclear. To this end, precipitation funds risk pre-warning mechanism shall be established; the regulator bodies shall be diversified; the responsibility mechanism shall be improved. The third-party payment transaction mode facilitates money laundering. The existing legal norms have a lot of problems. It is therefore necessary to include the anti-money-laundering of third-party payment industry into the entire anti-money-laundering system, and to re-position the anti-money-laundering obligations of third-party payment enterprises, as well as realize the dynamic adjustment of regulatory and control measures. The reasons for the illegal cash withdrawal of credit card through third-party payment are:low rate (economic root); convenient and efficient; interests associated with each other, non-action of related bodies; laggardness of legislation. For illegal cash withdrawal of credit card through third-party payment, the commercial banks are required to coordinate with third-party payment enterprises to confront the problem together; the third-party payment credit shall be incorporated into the social credit system; attention shall be paid to the improvement of certification process; the punitive measures must be strengthened. The rights and obligations of related bodies shall be allocated scientifically.The thirty-party payment consumer safety right is primarily the property security right. To protect the third-party payment consumer safety right can provide the legal protection for the development of third-party payment enterprises and meet the inevitable demand of consumers on proper funds security. Special problems involved in third-party payment consumer safety right protection are:the third-party payment institutions forcibly freeze, allocate the consumers’ funds, resulting in the consumers’loss of financial control; the login name and password of third-party payment account are stolen, causing financial losses; the third-party payment platform passes the buck for various agreements, failing to fulfill the obligations on active security assurance. The development direction of consumer safety right protection is:to forbid the third-party payment enterprises to dispose of consumers’ funds at will; to strengthen the security assurance obligations of third-party payment platforms. The specific content of the personal information rights of consumers in the third-party payment industry are:information decision-making right, information inquiring right, information deleting right, and information confidentiality right; the problem needing further focus is:the limits of authority of consumers and third-party payment enterprises for the disposition of consumers’ personal information are being determined; the information security obligations of third-party payment enterprises are defined; the scope of information collection of third-party payment platforms are restricted; and the civil liability mechanism is improved. The theoretical basis for the right to know of third-party payment consumers is also the information asymmetry. The right to know of consumers are more vulnerable, as demonstrated in that:the notification obligation is not fulfilled for agreement alteration, so that the consumers are not able to stay informed about service updates; the consumers are not able to feel and know that the third-party payment platforms do not fulfill the risk prompts obligations; the basic information disclosure obligations of third-party payment enterprises are difficult to implement in practice. In this context, the right to know of third-party payment consumers shall be further protected, the information disclosure shall be completed to let consumers understand the whole transaction procedures; the risk disclosure obligations shall be enforced to increase the consumers’ risk prevention awareness. If the services provided by the third-party payment enterprises are defective, resulting in losses of consumers, the consumers may also claim for compensation from third-party payment enterprises in accordance with the law. The main problems in protection of the right of claim of third-party payment consumers are:the third-party payment enterprises unilaterally dissolve the contracts and refuse to make compensation; the scope of compensation for damage is unduly restricted; the consumers cannot grasp the evidence and have inadequate ability to present evidence, beset with difficulties in safeguarding legal rights. The system safeguard for the right of claim of third-party payment consumers is:convenient claiming procedures; improvement of substantive norms. The right of choice of consumers:the right of choice of consumers in third-party payment services is mainly manifested in selection of service providers and selection of service contents. The right of choice of consumers in third-party payment services is often subject to various restrictions in reality, specific manifestations as:consumers cannot decide the service providers and have no right to choose the contents of service, and it is hard for consumers to compare, identify and evaluate whether the services are good or not. For the protection of right of choice of consumers in third-party payment industry, the special rules are: diversified development, dynamic regulation and control, to create prerequisites for consumers’ right of choice; improved technical standards, to provide indicators for consumers to make choices; to regulate the post-contract obligations of third-party payment platforms.