Whether it is a gift giving, a year-end bonus, or a holiday fee or personal relationship on weekdays.

The chain of interests of "more beauty"

The calls and efforts to halt "shopping coupons" and "shopping cards" have never ceased, but the reason why they have repeatedly been banned is because there is a "chain of interest" behind the shopping cards.

For shopping malls, restaurants, beauty salons and fitness companies that issue their own cards, issuing cards can not only lock in customers, get huge cash flow ahead of time, but also get the expired consumption balance due to various reasons, such as overdue shopping cards, damage and zero abandonment.

For the third party card issuers, help

The huge market demand has also given birth to the third ring of the shopping card interest chain - the "scalper" who sells the shopping cards as a livelihood.

In Shanghai Xujiahui business district, a weekly scalper who sold the shopping malls shopping cards told reporters that his purchase price was generally 96-97 fold of the card face value and then sold at a price of 97.5-98.5 discount.

Hidden risks after interest chain

Liu Chunyan, an associate professor of law school at Tongji University, thinks that the huge cash flow generated by the shopping card market every year is equivalent to a huge "precipitation fund". From a practical point of view, the funds of many card issuing agencies in Beijing and Shanghai are not strictly placed in banks but are invested in it.

Once there are investment mistakes and capital losses, the rights and interests of the purchasers can not be guaranteed.

Liu Chunyan said.

Insiders say that enterprises will invest precipitated funds in high-risk, high return industries, such as stocks or capital lending. It is likely that the company's capital chain will be broken due to investment losses, which will bring huge losses to consumers.

Because many third party card issuers do not have high registered capital, if there is a capital loss, it may not be enough to make up for the loss of cardholders.

How to regulate the shopping card market

Liu Chunyan believes that banks need to adopt a series of regulatory measures such as deposit reserve ratio and risk isolation to protect the safety of customers' deposits, and card issuing agencies should take similar regulatory measures.

For the upcoming licensing institutions, it is necessary to regularly disclose the direction of funds; strictly limit the flow of "precipitating funds", and supervise the issuing bodies as "quasi banks"; third, give the institutions that have not obtained licenses to give a certain period of pition and then choose to shut down.

In response to the accusation that shopping cards become money laundering and corruption tools, Ye Lin, a professor at Renmin University of China law school, said that there is no necessary connection between shopping cards and corruption. It is impossible to deny the legitimacy of prepaid consumption because of corruption phenomena such as bribery and bribery.