| Bank card, started in the 1950s, is a new type of financial product combined traditional financial business with electronic information technology. Bank card, as an integration of retail business and modern communications technology, since its birth, is neither simply a financial product nor the innovated usage of information technology. In traditional definition, banking industry is composed of card issuer, acquirer, bankcard association, cardholders and merchants. Card issuer is mainly engaged in issuing bank card to user, while acquirer processing bank card acceptance for special merchants, bankcard association providing transfer service of inter-bank information.From the perspective of industrial organization, in modern bank card theory, industrial chain of bank card industry is a typical bilateral market with network externalities. Generally speaking, bank card contributes to the interactions between cardholders and merchants by the approach of contacting card issuers and acquirers directly and pricing appropriately on the platform of bankcard association. Therefore, bilateral market theory at least has explained a part of organization mode of current bank card industry. Thus, bilateral market theory is a crucial starting point of the study on bankcard pricing theory.In 2013, in a notice about the optimization and adjustment of bank card handling charge issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, our merchants can be basically divided into four categories including catering and entertainment industry with 1.25% handling charge, general type with 0.78%, people's livelihood with 0.38% and public welfare without any procedure charge. Meanwhile, real estate, automobile and wholesale business can not be charged more than 80 yuan,80 yuan and 26 yuan respectively on every business. Swipe fee charged to merchant is eventually assigned to issuing bank, acquirer and bank card settlement organizations at the proportion of 7:2:1.In recent years, with the rapid development of bank card industry in China, as the current interchange fees pricing mechanism has promoted the consumption payment by bank cards, improved the payment environment, some problems are also uncovered gradually, such as debit and credit card with same charging standard could not adapt the development of banking industry any more, which of course is not conducive to promoting the further development of bank card industry. Online payment mechanism, for example, online shopping and online acquiring business is not involved in current charging mechanism. Gap of interchange fees in different industries is likely to cause illegal acts, such as tampering the Mcc code so as to reduce the charge. Putting caps on wipe fees caps charged to merchants is against reflecting the matching relation of cost and benefit. All those problems have attracted more and more attention of people in both industry and academia. Therefore, in a new environment, under a new conditions, it is very vital to study the charging mechanism of bank card in China. In this paper, relevant conclusions are based on the research of differentiated pricing mechanism of bank card handling charge in China.Firstly, the characteristics of network externalities and bilateral market and the basic theories of interchange fees pricing mechanism and differential pricing mechanism are summarized in this paper on the basis of the study of bank card interchange fees worldwide. Secondly, differences and similarities are found by comparing the interchange fee pricing mechanism between China and overseas. In this case, all the theoretical analysis and model deductions prove the necessity of differential pricing mechanism of interchange fees between debit and credit cards. Thirdly, data provided by China Union Pay card transactions helps to draw the conclusion that interchange fees of credit card is undervalued while debit card overvalued. And some suggestions are given for a sound sustainable development of the bank card market in China at the end of this paper. |
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