The fight over the future of global payments
全球支付的未来之争

Digital payments have transformed domestic finance. Now competition is going global
数字支付已经改变了国内金融。现在，竞争正在走向全球化

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA - 2022/08/01: A Unified Payment Interface (UPI) barcode, or QR code, is kept at a vegetable stall for customers to make digital payments in Mumbai.
印度马哈拉施特拉邦孟买 - 2022/08/01: 在孟买，一个蔬菜摊位上放着一个统一支付接口(UPI)的条形码或二维码，供顾客进行数字支付。

Over the past two decades the ways people pay, receive and transfer money have changed beyond recognition. The revolution began in 2007 when m-pesa made it possible for Kenyans to make payments with a text message.
在过去的20年里，人们支付、接收和转移资金的方式已经发生了翻天覆地的变化。这场革命始于2007年，当时m-pesa使肯尼亚人可以通过短信进行支付。

In 2011 Alipay launched payment-by-qr-code in China, a system that has all but replaced cash in cities. Since then India’s state-led Unified Payments Interface (upi) and Brazil’s Pix have vastly widened access to the financial system among the poor.
2011年，支付宝在中国推出了 "扫码支付"，这一系统几乎取代了城市中的现金。此后，印度国家主导的统一支付界面（upi）和巴西的Pix大大拓宽了穷人对金融系统的使用。

As our special report explains, globally the use of notes and coins has been cut by a third, e-commerce has boomed and life without digital payments has become unimaginable.
正如我们的特别报告所解释的那样，在全球范围内，纸币和硬币的使用已经减少了三分之一，电子商务已经蓬勃发展，没有数字支付的生活已经变得难以想象。

Having transformed how people use money at home, the race to transform payments is now going global. Cross-border retail spending (including tourism) and remittances will hit $5trn this year; business-to-business payments are worth eight times that.
在改变了人们在国内使用金钱的方式之后，改革支付的竞赛现在正走向全球。跨境零售支出（包括旅游）和汇款今年将达到5万亿美元；企业对企业支付的价值是这个数字的8倍。

Three big players are duking it out to process these vast flows of funds. The West’s legacy system, including the Visa-Mastercard duopoly and swift, a messaging system for bank payments, is the dominant incumbent.
三家大公司正在为处理这些庞大的资金流而展开激烈的角逐。西方的传统系统，包括维萨-万事达卡的双头垄断和银行支付的信息传递系统swift，是占主导地位的。

China is the most advanced challenger, with its payment apps, its card network, UnionPay, and cips, its more expansive alternative to swift. In third place is India, whose ambition to deploy upi globally has grown.
中国是最先进的挑战者，它有支付应用程序、银联卡网络和cips，它是swift的更广泛的替代品。排在第三位的是印度，其在全球范围内部署upi的雄心壮志已经增强。

The competition among the three blocs is heating up fast. Alipay is now accepted by 2.5m merchants overseas. UnionPay, which is already the world’s largest card network by transaction volume, is accepted by 65m merchants globally, compared with Visa’s 100m. Most are outside China.
这三个集团之间的竞争正在迅速升温。支付宝现在被250万海外商户接受。按交易量计算，银联已经是世界上最大的银行卡网络，全球有6500万商户接受银联卡，而维萨卡有1亿。大多数是在中国之外。

India’s upi has been linked with Singapore’s fast payment system, allowing consumers in both countries to pay in the other using their domestic platform. India is in talks with more than 30 other countries to export its payments kit, which would link their systems too.
印度的upi已经与新加坡的快速支付系统相连，允许这两个国家的消费者使用其国内平台在另一个国家付款。印度正在与其他30多个国家谈判，以出口其支付套件，这也将连接他们的系统。

In November four central banks, including China’s, successfully tested a cross-border system for settling transactions using central-bank digital currencies.
11月，包括中国在内的四家中央银行成功测试了一个使用中央银行数字货币进行交易结算的跨境系统。

The Asian giants have several motives for spreading their wings. The most important is to become less dependent on the West.
亚洲巨头们有几个动机来扩展他们的翅膀。最重要的是要减少对西方的依赖。

Russia’s card network, Mir, launched after Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, has limited the damage done by the withdrawal of Visa and Mastercard from Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
俄罗斯的卡片网络Mir是在2014年吞并克里米亚后推出的，它限制了维萨和万事达卡在俄罗斯全面打击乌克兰后退出的损害。

Volumes on cips have surged since 2020, helped by Russia being mostly cut out of swift. But building a sanctions-workaround is not the only goal.
自2020年以来，cips的交易量激增，这得益于俄罗斯大部分被排除在迅雷之外。但建立一个制裁性的工作场所并不是唯一的目标。

Countries also crave for themselves the clout that comes with control over the world’s financial infrastructure, as well as seeking more convenience for their people when they transact internationally.
各国也渴望获得控制世界金融基础设施所带来的影响力，并为其人民在进行国际交易时寻求更多便利。

The West might fear a fragmentation of the global financial infrastructure that allows wrongdoers to escape future sanctions. Yet a more open landscape for global payments will benefit its consumers and businesses.
西方国家可能会担心全球金融基础设施的分裂，使不法分子逃避未来的制裁。然而，一个更加开放的全球支付环境将有利于其消费者和企业。

Under competitive pressure swift has already upgraded its once-clunky system and has nearly halved the cost of messaging. The average cost of a remittance has been cut by a third in the past decade partly because of new fintechs. The Western card networks are overdue a shake-up.
在竞争压力下，Swift已经对其曾经笨重的系统进行了升级，并将信息传递的成本几乎减半。在过去十年中，汇款的平均成本已经减少了三分之一，部分原因是新的金融技术。西方的银行卡网络早该进行调整了。

The typical 1% cross-border fee they charge (on top of a 1-3% levy on merchants) supports company-wide net margins of around 50%, among the highest in the world for listed firms. The spread of Alipay, upi and even other newcomers like GrabPay in South-East Asia or WhatsApp Pay, which just launched in Singapore and Brazil, will give consumers other options.
他们通常收取1%的跨境费用（在对商户征收1-3%的费用之外），支持整个公司约50%的净利润，是全球上市公司中最高的。支付宝、upi，甚至其他新来者，如东南亚的GrabPay或刚刚在新加坡和巴西推出的WhatsApp Pay的推广，将为消费者提供其他选择。

Domestic payments markets have tended to be winner-takes-most because people like using a big network with lots of other users. For cross-border payments, consumers and businesses will tend to favour the payments system they use in their respective home countries.
国内支付市场往往是赢家通吃，因为人们喜欢使用一个有很多其他用户的大网络。对于跨境支付，消费者和企业将倾向于他们在各自国家使用的支付系统。

Since it is increasingly easy for merchants to accept many different payment options, change seems likely. A system where people can use their domestic networks to pay abroad promises to be more convenient as well as cheaper.
由于商家越来越容易接受许多不同的支付方式，变化似乎是可能的。一个人们可以使用其国内网络在国外付款的系统有望变得更加方便和便宜。

Diverse, not divided
多样化，而不是分裂

The countries that benefit most will be those that stay open to all platforms and let them overlap, rather than forcing people to use national champions.
受益最大的国家将是那些对所有平台保持开放并让它们重叠的国家，而不是强迫人们使用国家冠军。

And though the West will lose some power as a result of the proliferation of alternatives to its payments systems, it will maintain the ability to levy the most effective forms of sanctions: on flows of trade and technology.
尽管西方会因为其支付系统替代品的扩散而失去一些权力，但它将保持对贸易和技术流动进行最有效制裁的能力。

The digitisation of finance has already made billions of lives better. The new global race promises to enhance those gains.
金融的数字化已经让数十亿人的生活变得更好。新的全球竞赛有望增强这些成果。

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