Rebirth of England

In fact, there is not much difference between China and overseas in terms of mobile payment technology.

As for why the gap between the two sides is so big after ten years?

First of all, in terms of demand, it is true that mobile payment only requires a mobile phone - a mobile phone is something that everyone must bring when going out, but in terms of paperless payment, Europe and the United States already have a complete credit card payment system. Whether it is a large shopping mall or a roadside shop, they have popularized related card swiping machines, which is relatively convenient. Even in many cities in Europe and the United States, checks can be used very conveniently.

They usually don’t need to bring too much cash when going out, just a credit card.

In China, this aspect is slightly behind the development of European and American societies. Only some shopping malls and specialty stores can accept card payments. Ordinary stores and roadside stalls do not have such conditions.

Therefore, it is easier to promote mobile payment in China.

In terms of resistance, it is precisely because the relevant credit card and check businesses in Europe and the United States are very complete, and there are a whole line of related supporting companies and institutions to provide services for these. Therefore, mobile payment will also be resisted by these companies that rely on the credit card payment system in terms of promotion.

When mobile payment is not popular, let those banks and credit card companies choose between mobile payment and their traditional payment customers, and the result is obvious.

This also makes the development of mobile payment in Europe and the United States slow and the resistance is very large.

But no matter what, Barron knows that mobile payment will become a trend, and it will develop relatively well in many countries in Europe and the United States in the future. Although it is not as popular as China, the growth in proportion is still very considerable.

And Barron himself also has relevant resources, such as Standard Chartered Bank under Standard Chartered-Merrill Lynch Group, which he controls, and some American banks where he holds shares and can exert influence, which can support KlarnaPay.

This is also the main reason why KlarnaPay can grow rapidly in the proportion of mobile payments, although at present, the total amount of mobile payments is still far behind traditional credit card and check payment methods.

Based on the current low percentage of users of touch-screen smartphones, and the popularization of mobile payment is not something that can be achieved overnight - even in China, in the original time and space, it was not until 2015 that it could be considered relatively popular. After that, Alipay and WeChat began to vigorously subsidize offline payments in order to compete for the mobile payment market.

This not only made the Chinese people accustomed to using Alipay and WeChat to pay for daily offline consumption, but also established the situation of two strong players in the field of mobile payment in China.

Therefore, even in China, where mobile payment is developing the fastest, it still takes four years to popularize mobile payment, not to mention Europe and the United States, where the old card swiping habits are more stubborn.

In this regard, they still have time, but now is the time to plan ahead.

But another more urgent thing for Woaw is the launch of their cloud service.

The earliest cloud service was launched by Amazon, which launched AWS in 2006, Google launched the PaaS service App Engine in 2008, and Microsoft also launched their cloud service Azure last year.

Globally, Amazon's AWS occupies the vast majority of the cloud service market share, with more than half of the cloud services belonging to them. However, after Google and Microsoft entered the market, the two sides also began to compete fiercely.

In fact, Amazon and Microsoft are different in their cloud service business.

Amazon Cloud mainly focuses on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), which is the infrastructure service of cloud computing.

This means that Amazon needs to build data centers in various regions, purchase servers, storage and other infrastructure, and then rent these computing powers to customers - the essence of IaaS business is to rent servers.

In order to achieve continuous business growth, you have to keep buying new servers and expanding data center clusters. This is a very asset-heavy business with relatively large investments. When there are not many competitors at present, you can still make good profits. Once more competitors join, the profits will inevitably be diluted.

From the customer's perspective, the motivation for customers to use IaaS services is also very clear, which is to reduce costs, because renting is cheaper than buying.

Moreover, because computing power is universal, just like electricity is the same, there is no difference for customers, of course, whichever one is cheaper will be used.

This is why the future cloud service market is mainly dominated by giants competing with each other. After all, on the one hand, these Internet giants have the need for cloud services, and on the other hand, they are more able to afford the corresponding investment, have economies of scale, and can survive in the future price war.

Unlike Amazon, which mainly does IaaS and will take the low-price route in the future, Microsoft, as a veteran software giant, started with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to enter cloud computing.

PaaS means that it not only provides customers with cloud computing infrastructure, but also configures operating systems, middleware, runtimes, etc. on the infrastructure, thereby building a software development platform. Customers develop their own applications on the platform and only need to focus on their own business logic, not the underlying layer.

Even in the future, in addition to PaaS, Microsoft is also vigorously developing SaaS, which is often referred to as "software as a service" in the future. Customers do not even need to develop their own applications, but can directly use software and data deployed in the cloud.

For example, cloud computing vendors are like landlords renting out houses. IaaS is equivalent to rough-finished houses with "water, electricity, gas and electricity", PaaS is equivalent to fine-decorated houses, and SaaS is a hotel-style apartment that you can move in with your luggage. The services provided are getting better and better, and the fees charged are of course getting higher and higher.

For Woaw, before encountering Microsoft, Baron had already instructed them to set up a cloud computing-related research center and invest in the development of cloud technology.

Their upcoming WWS (Woaw Web Services) will first be used to meet their own cloud service needs and those of other industries controlled by Baron.

For example, Woaw's own user photo storage, YouTube's video storage, and related needs of companies such as Argos.com, DailyVedio, and O2 Telecom.

Of course, because Woaw does not have such a strong software development foundation as Microsoft, WWS will initially choose Amazon AWS's IaaS approach...

But in the future, they will also try to cooperate with companies that are more proficient in software, such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Penguin, to improve their WWS services and transition to PaaS.

"Next, we will first invest $5 billion to build new cloud computing data centers in North America, Europe, and East Asia, and prepare to double the number of our data centers within 5 years..."

Baron knew that the $5 billion Khalid mentioned would only be the first investment of Woaw in cloud computing data centers, and investment would continue to increase in the future.

For example, Microsoft plans to invest more than $15 billion in the purchase and construction of cloud computing data centers within five years...

Soon, in this field, the arms race among the giants will become more and more intense.