Research On The Supervision On Customer Deposit Of The Bike Sharing Service

The year of 2017 witnessed the boom as well as the transition of bike sharing market,shared bikes of different companies appeared in the corners of cities and gradually disappeared as the bankruptcy of many of those companies.A barrage of bankruptcy of the bike sharing service companies came since June 2017,meanwhile the customers found their deposit was embezzled by the companies who were no longer able to pay back their deposit.This thesis is written in order to solve the problem of customer deposit embezzlement in bike sharing services and to come up with administrative regulatory solutions.The customers pay deposit to the bike sharing service supplier to guarantee that they will properly use the bikes,which is alienation guarantee.This thesis argues that the regulatory authority should forbid bike sharing service companies to directly use the deposit of customers.There are two main aims of customer deposit supervision: first,to prevent the companies from embezzling customer deposit;second,to protect customer deposit from the business risks of the companies.This thesis comes up with two approaches of customer deposit regulation which are to establish pledge rights and bank custody,and to establish a trust.As for the approach of establishing pledge rights and bank custody,the bike sharing service companies should conclude pledge contracts with the customers and deposit the pledge money into a special bank account for "specialization",the bank account should be under the custody of the bank.As for the approach of establishing a trust,the trust property is the deposit of customers,the trustor is the bike sharing service company,the beneficiaries are the company and all the customers who have paid the deposit,and the trustee should be a trust practitioner,which is,in China,a licensed trust company.This thesis argues that both approach have their own advantages and disadvantages.As for the approach of establishing pledge rights and bank custody,the conditions for setting up money pledge are strict,especially the conditions of “specialization”,and the operation is inflexible,but it is easy to set up and the operation cost is lower,which is suitable for the smaller or start-up enterprises.To establishing a trust can bring more capital appreciation and the flexible distribution of investment income of the deposit,of which the regulatory costs are lower,but the establishing and operation costs are high,so it is suitable for larger bike sharing service companies.This thesis concludes that,the regulatory authorities should provide that,if a bike sharing service company collects customer deposit,it shall establish a trust with all the deposit,but if the deposit are below certain amount,the deposit may be managed in the way of establishing pledge under the custody of the bank.Besides,the regulations and operations of supervision of the authorities should be unified,meanwhile the relevant legislation should be improved and the administrative license on bike sharing service should be established.The regulatory authorities of customer deposit of bike sharing service should be China Banking Regulatory Commission and its branches in different cities.