He Zhiyu, being a shrewd veteran of the world, instantly read the look in Chen Pingjiang's eyes.
He leaned in and whispered,
"He's just a deputy general manager in charge of sales. The guy above him is retiring in a few months, and right now, he is desperate to show progress and climb the ladder."
Only then did Chen Pingjiang nod, showing a look of sudden realization.
The rice bowl of a state-owned enterprise is indeed hard to carry. There are too many rules, and seniority-based ranking is just too severe.
Chen Pingjiang smiled at Wu Qing and said,
"To be honest, Manager Wu, it's not that the house isn't good. It's just that I can't quite appreciate it."
The rejection in his words was already very obvious.
It was enough to make anyone feel a wave of frustration.
This President Chen's standards are way too high. He's really hard to please...
Wan Qiping clapped his hands to dust off the dirt he'd gotten from leaning on the balcony railing, grinning as he said,
"If you aren't buying, what are we even buying for?"
An Lixing quietly rolled his eyes, thinking to himself:
'I'd honestly prefer if you didn't buy. We're only humoring you because of President Chen. Who do you think you are otherwise?'
Wu Qing was clearly unwilling to let such a big fish get away.
To him, sales performance itself wasn't the top priority.
The apartments at COFCO Seaview One weren't hard to sell anyway.
The main issue was that the sales were currently being proxied by E-House China.
If they didn't sell well, it wouldn't affect him much anyway—and E-House was appointed by the higher-ups, so he hadn't pocketed a single cent from them.
But if he could pull strings and establish a solid connection with Chen Pingjiang, the meaning would be entirely different.
"President Chen, it's like this. As you must have heard before coming here, these few buildings of ours and Tomson Seaview are practically the only frontline river views left along the Huangpu River. You might not see the full appeal of the river view during the day, but it looks far better at night. Especially the Bund's historic international architecture across the river—it will all be clearly in view."
"If there's anything you're unsatisfied with, just say the word. Everything is negotiable. If you don't like the interior decoration, I can have it completely gutted and redone in whatever style you prefer. The price will remain the same, and we'll treat the new renovation as a complimentary gift."
Right after Wu Qing finished speaking—before Chen Pingjiang could even reply—the old rascal Zhang Fu chimed in first:
"Exactly, President Chen, I think we should just go with this. I actually like this place quite a lot."
He Zhiyu glanced at Zhang Fu with a look of surprise.
In his mind, he knew this guy wasn't usually so impulsive.
What he didn't know was that Zhang Fu had been bitterly harboring a grudge over failing to secure a property at Zhongshan Villas.
The other three had all bought one, leaving him as the only one left out.
'Doesn't that just show that my determination to align myself with the leadership isn't firm enough?!'
Now that such a rare and perfect opportunity had presented itself, he was determined to become neighbors with Chen Pingjiang, even if they lived on different floors of the same building.
"If you ask me, let's just not have President Chen pay for this apartment. A few of us old buddies can scrape our funds together and pay it off for him. It's not that President Chen lacks the money, but rather that we've been quite tactless all this time. President Chen has been leading us to make money, yet we've never shown our appreciation."
Zhang Fu said with a smile.
"I have no objections! I ate my fill on the Renren Group-buying project. Without Pingjiang leading the way, we wouldn't be where we are today."
Liu Cheng added.
Back when Renren Group-buying hadn't even launched yet, these guys had been watching with eager eyes.
They pooled together 50 million RMB each, totaling 500 million RMB to secure a 5% stake.
Later, when Renren Group-buying went through financing rounds, their 50 million RMB instantly turned into 50 million USD.
And now, the overall valuation of Renren Group-buying had skyrocketed to 16.2 billion USD—especially after their successful acquisition of Dianping.
Even though their shares had been diluted over time, the equity they held in their hands was still worth roughly 70 million USD.
The key was, how long had it even been? Even robbing a bank wouldn't make money this fast.
And it was highly predictable that once the food delivery project launched this year, the overall valuation of Renren Group-buying would start surging all over again.
"Alright, alright, are you guys treating me like I'm invisible? How could I possibly let you guys pay for my house? With your small frames, you'd better keep your capital for your own businesses."
Chen Pingjiang didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He turned back to Wu Qing and said,
"We'll do as Manager Wu suggested. Redo the interior decoration for me, and then prepare one unit for each of us."
Even though he knew these guys meant well, how thick-skinned would Chen Pingjiang have to be to live in a house bought for him by his business partners?
He would become the laughingstock of the town if word got out.
Zhang Fu wanted to say more, but Chen Pingjiang cut him off with a wave of his hand:
"There's no point in pushing further. I appreciate the sentiment."
Seeing that Chen Pingjiang had spoken, Zhang Fu could only reluctantly shut his mouth.
Only then did Wu Qing and his colleague let out a sigh of relief, their faces beaming with joy.
In the end, Chen Pingjiang, Zhang Fu, and He Zhiyu each took a 420-square-meter unit, while Liu Cheng and Wan Qiping took the 360-square-meter ones.
Selling five units in one go made An Lixing's mouth twist with a massive grin.
Taking Chen Pingjiang's 420-square-meter unit as an example, the entire package would cost nearly 50 million RMB.
Wu Qing originally wanted to offer a discount, but Chen Pingjiang waved it off:
"Just make sure you speed up the new renovation and do a high-quality job. Throw in the home appliances as well."
Wu Qing and his colleague wanted to host a banquet to entertain Chen Pingjiang and the others that evening, but Chen Pingjiang declined under the pretext of having other matters to attend to, telling He Zhiyu and the guys to go ahead and enjoy themselves.
On the way back, Cong Nini asked curiously,
"Do you actually have things to do tonight?"
"Nope."
"Then why aren't you going?"
Chen Pingjiang smiled and asked back,
"What else can a bunch of old men do besides fool around with women? Would it be convenient for me to bring you along?"
Cong Nini, refusing to back down, puffed out her chest:
"If they can play with women, you can play with me too!"
"Shoo, shoo, aren't you just talking nonsense? Are you the same as those worldly women outside?"
"I'm different. I'm much more obedient than them."
"Have you thought of where you want to go to have fun then?"
Chen Pingjiang asked.
"Let's go abroad. Not in China. Staying in China is boring—everywhere we go, there's someone who knows you, so we can't play to our hearts' content."
Chen Pingjiang didn't really mind.
Going abroad was fine, and they could still travel easily right now.
In a few years, he probably wouldn't even dare to travel abroad.
Who knew if he would be detained the moment he stepped off a plane?
In fact, Chen Pingjiang would eventually ask the technical backbones of SMIC (Hua-Chip) and Orange Technology to minimize their travel abroad.
The MH370 incident was still fresh in his memory.
To Chen Pingjiang's complete surprise, before the two of them even had a chance to set off on their trip, he received a phone call from the high-ranking officials.
Nearly a year after the release of the 'Administrative Measures for the Payment Services of Non-Financial Institutions', the payment licenses were finally coming...
The payment license, officially known as the Payment Business Permit, was essentially the third-party payment license—a qualification used to regulate the operations of third-party payment platforms.
Licensed institutions could offer various payment services, including online payments, bank card merchant acquiring, and prepaid card services.
Without a payment license, non-financial institutions were strictly forbidden from offering any corresponding payment services.
Another major benefit was that once you had a payment license, you could accumulate escrow funds (albeit with certain time limits).
However, within the ecosystems of massive capital giants, a single day's transaction volume was an astronomical figure.
The ability to hold onto these funds essentially gave them access to a massive, continuous stream of cash flow.
Without a concrete example, this concept might seem abstract.
But Meituan Payment had once been publicly reported by a lawyer for operating without a license, leading to them being summoned and shut down by the central bank.
At that time, Meituan was operating online payment clearing services without having obtained the Payment Business Permit from the central bank, and they had provided top-up features for their Meituan Payment accounts without a Prepaid Card License, resulting in an illegal accumulation of escrow funds, which led to the successful report against them.
With this license, Ali's Alipay and WeChat Pay's digital wallets could finally hold balances!
There was no time to lose.
He had to rush back to Dongjiang for a meeting immediately.
"Something urgent came up suddenly, so I won't have time to go with you. But the hotel is already booked."
Chen Pingjiang patted the cheek of a reluctant Cong Nini.
"Take Zhang Lu with you. Just take my private jet. Stay there for half a month before coming back. If you run out of money, just use this card."
Hearing this, Cong Nini cheered up again.
Although Chen Pingjiang couldn't accompany her, going with her best friend was still great, and she could show off a little along the way.
This time, the destination was still Tahiti.
During the last Renren Group annual meeting, this trip had appeared as a grand prize, though Chen Pingjiang himself had never been.
Tahiti was truly expensive.
Usually, five or six days would easily cost 200,000 RMB, and that was just for average hotels.
Staying at a top-tier resort for half a month and trying out various activities would easily push the bill toward 500,000 RMB.
The next day, Chen Pingjiang arrived back in Dongjiang.
For this emergency meeting, all the heads of the internet companies under Chen Pingjiang's umbrella had gathered.
"Chairman Chen, our Renren Group-buying wants a payment license too."
Gao Songbin said with envy.
He also wanted to run his own payment system.
The crucial point was that the group-buying industry involved an incredibly high frequency of transaction payments.
Li Xi spoke up first:
"Your Renren Group-buying can apply for one now, but before the second batch of licenses is released, you need to hurry up and help WeChat Pay secure its territory first."
Chen Pingjiang smiled and said,
"Now is not the time for us to fragment our internal strength. We should keep our guns pointed outward and focus on snatching the market from Alipay first."
Payment is the most critical link in any internet activity.
Without it, whether it's online shopping, group-buying, or in-game microtransactions, nothing can be done smoothly.
From a business model perspective, a payment license is also a vital way for these internet companies to complete the closed loop of their own business models.
In addition, they could charge other platforms connecting to their system a gateway transaction fee.
Alipay's gateway fees were unbelievably high.
For general industries, the third-party payment gateway fee was around 0.6%, while for sectors like gaming, entertainment, and digital products, it went up to 1.2%.
For transfers made through Alipay, as long as the receiving party was an enterprise, the channel fee was 0%.
This might not look like much at first glance, right?
But what if tens of billions of funds were flowing through the platform every single day?
Calculated at the lowest rate of 0.6%, a daily transaction volume of 5 billion RMB would bring in a whopping 30 million RMB in revenue in just one day.
It was no wonder companies like JD.com and Meituan were practically forced to build their own payment systems.
Chen Pingjiang said,
"This is the first time we are going head-to-head with Alibaba. We either don't fight, or we fight to the absolute end."
Li Xi nodded:
"We have been preparing for this day for a very long time."
"We have already laid out our battle plans in several sectors ahead of time. First is the battleground between users and products—which is e-commerce and group-buying. We won't have many weak points in this area. Ali has Taobao and Tmall, but we have JD.com and Renren Group-buying."
"I believe the payment scenarios we need to repeatedly fight over with Alipay are, first, utility bill payments—whether it's electricity, gas, water, or parking fees. Second is municipal services, which includes government offices and medical services. But the fiercest competition will definitely be offline payments, which includes, but is not limited to, restaurants, convenience stores, movie theaters, supermarkets, and wet markets. That is where the real goldmine lies."
As soon as he finished speaking, the executives in the room gasped.
China was so massive and populated; the physical offline payment war was going to be an absolute bloodbath.
They would literally have to fight to win over businesses shop by shop.
Chen Pingjiang glanced at Gao Songbin.
Gao Songbin immediately lowered his head and nodded sheepishly:
"I get it, Boss. I'll have all the Renren Group-buying offline sales representatives across the country put all their strength into pushing this. But Old Li, you'll have to charge me a lower gateway fee in the future, and our collaboration fees for this run can't be too low either."
Li Xi laughed out loud:
"Our Renren Network doesn't have many offline sales reps left, so we have to rely on our allies. As long as we can capture the terminal offline payment scenarios, I'll give you as much funding as Chairman Chen approves."
With that, Gao Songbin fell silent.
'Hah, that's basically saying nothing at all.'
Chen Pingjiang thought for a moment and said,
"Actually, there are two other massive scenarios. One is wealth management, and the other is red packets (hongbao). We need to hurry up and develop the wealth management feature, and I will personally oversee the red packet campaign."
Li Xi was stunned for a moment:
"Boss, what do you mean by wealth management?"
"Is wealth management that hard to understand? It's the same principle as taking your money from the bank to buy mutual funds. We need to attract users' idle money into their digital wallets, and then use those funds to buy money market funds, generating stable returns to yield back to the users."
Miao Bingwei, being a pure tech guy, didn't quite grasp the business logic behind it:
"I understand absorbing the users' money, and I understand making the cake bigger. But how do we ourselves make a profit from this?"
"The first is naturally interest income; second is the management fees; and there are other ways to monetize, such as partnering to sell investment funds. Explaining this to a tech guy like you is a waste of breath. Shu Mang definitely understands the logic here."
Internet wealth management was an absolute superweapon.
Chen Pingjiang understood very clearly that even if they didn't do it, Alipay and other institutions would eventually do it anyway.
Since that was the case, he might as well do it himself, but make it far more compliant to avoid any loopholes.
He didn't want to end up turning into the very dragon he was trying to slay.
After wrapping up the directives for WeChat Pay, Chen Pingjiang turned his gaze back to Gao Songbin:
"How are the preparations for the food delivery business coming along? Now that the payment license is in hand, the next step is to officially launch the food delivery business. At the same time, the group-buying market will become highly active again."
Gao Songbin nodded:
"Right now, the recruitment for our 'Blue Knights' (delivery riders) in first- and second-tier cities is basically complete. We are just waiting for your command to launch the food delivery service at any moment. The recruitment for riders in lower-tier markets is still ongoing, which will take at least two to three months.
However, I noticed that a local food delivery platform called Ele.me has popped up in Shanghai. They used to focus on small university campus circles, but recently they've started expanding outward. I heard they even secured a 1-million-dollar investment from GSR Ventures."
Chen Pingjiang sighed with emotion:
"Everything that's meant to come is coming, not a single player is missing. Over the next three to five years, these sectors will be the absolute main trends."
Once the meeting concluded, the executives quickly rushed back to their respective companies and departments.
The implementation of the payment license was going to bring a massive shift to the entire internet ecosystem.
To put it in the most straightforward terms...
Topping up accounts for games like Dungeon & Fighter (DNF) and League of Legends (LOL) was about to become incredibly simple—just scan a QR code, and you were good to go.
Everyone had a massive mountain of work to carry out.
Meanwhile, at the Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, a high-level executive meeting was also underway.
Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, Lucy Peng, and other top executives were all present.
"We have trained our troops for a thousand days for this single moment. Whether Alipay can stand tall and carve out its path depends entirely on what we do next."
"It's clear now that our biggest rival is WeChat Pay. Both sides have their own unique advantages, and we must leverage ours to create differentiation."
Jack Ma's mind was incredibly sharp.
Backed by WeChat, WeChat Pay was practically impossible to kill.
To deal with this kind of opponent, they could only play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses.
Lucy Peng nodded in agreement:
"WeChat Pay can leverage social media networks to spread, and it naturally holds social functions. This is something our Alipay can't match even if we galloped at full speed. However, I believe that besides fighting over various payment scenarios, Alipay should focus heavily on security. We must market security as our absolute top priority, drilling the concept into users' minds that transferring, storing, and managing money through Alipay is far safer."
"Furthermore, WeChat Pay has not yet been spun off into a standalone app; it is currently used more for simple peer-to-peer transfers and collections. We can target functionality, such as corporate-to-corporate transfers."
"In addition, Alipay can expand abroad to seize international markets. Anywhere there are Chinese people, Alipay can be used."
Jack Ma looked at Lucy Peng with admiration.
Her capability was indeed formidable, and her analysis was incredibly thorough.
No wonder he had promoted her step-by-step.
"Chen Pingjiang... he is a tough nut to crack. We've been rivals with Tencent for so many years, trading wins and losses. We couldn't break into social media, and they tried to build Paipai.com but never beat us. But Chen Pingjiang is different. He hasn't suffered a single defeat since his debut. He is far more terrifying than Tencent—he literally pinned Tencent to the ground, forcing them to beg for mercy, cede territory, and pay reparations."
The handsome Joe Tsai chuckled:
"He is highly famous abroad. Eight out of ten people in the US tech and financial circles have heard of his name. Even Berkshire Hathaway bought shares of Renren Network in bulk and openly expressed optimism about Renren Group-buying. This even made the front page of the Washington Post."
Jack Ma spread his hands:
"He is indeed more capable than me. When I was 24, I had just graduated from a normal college, while he already commands such a massive business empire. But I won't cede territory or pay reparations like Tencent did."
"Say no more then, let's do this! Let's pull the horses out and see what they've got."
One of the directors laughed, visibly eager to get into the action.
"Lately, there have been rumors all over the market about how formidable the 'Renren Iron Army' is. People are almost forgetting the reputation of our own 'China Supplier Iron Army' (Alibaba's legendary sales team)."
Jack Ma nodded:
"Let's execute our first move. Right now, most of our 500 million Alipay users are on PC, while mobile users are incredibly scarce. The future belongs to the mobile internet; we must migrate our users to mobile. My plan is simple: make PC transfers subject to a fee, while mobile transfers remain completely free."
Someone asked:
"Isn't that a bit too simple and crude? I'm afraid we might face a massive backlash from users."
"We don't need to fear a backlash. I wouldn't use such drastic measures on Taobao because JD.com isn't worthy of it yet. But WeChat Pay is. If we don't complete this step, any offline payment strategy will just be a mirage."
Lucy Peng remarked with emotion:
"Indeed. Offline payments happen mostly outdoors—you can't expect users to carry a laptop on their backs. If we don't complete this step, we won't even be standing on the same starting line as WeChat Pay. I agree with President Ma's idea. Let's be direct; right now, we are racing against time."
(End of Chapter)