Though still in the early period of application nurturing, fixed-line phone payment has shown good growth prospects. Symbolized by the founding of China UnionPay's subsidiary Shanghai Cardinfo Co., Ltd. in 2003, the exploration of concept and application of fixed-line phone payment has gone through more than 3 years.

Main links of the industry chain, including China UnionPay, commercial banks and other financial institutions, telecom operators and value-added services providers have successively taken part in fixed-line phone payment services. Exploratory models have also changed from dispersed monolithic roles to the stage of services cooperation and promotion. Fixed- line phone payment terminals have grown by multiple folds. Different services providers have promoted fixed-line phone payment services applications to end users in various names. To a certain extent, this has raised user cognition of such services.

At the user level, fixed-line phone payment is a method of payment by contact-type card. Its usage is similar to that of traditional POS and ATM, and it can provide users with more genuine, reliable and secure use experiences. To a great extent, it avoids the security problem which has baffled the penetration of electronic payment means. At the industry chain level, fixed-line phone payment brings many notable benefits to the various parties on the chain: it is a key application for telecom operators to raise the ARPU value of their fixed-line phone services and change from infrastructure network suppliers to integrated information services providers.

It is an effective measure to activate large numbers of idle bankcards/China Unionpay cards and increase their fund deposits and trading volume. It is also an effective channel to extend value-added contents to the daily life of end users. At the competition level, though there is a relationship of direct competition between fixed-line phone payment and online payment and payment by telephone, the wide use of fixed-line phone payment will play a great role in promoting users to form a habit of shopping using bankcard when the numbers of bankcards and POS machines are greatly out of balance in China. It can also help nurture users' other means of electronic payment habit. Therefore, providers of electronic payment services such as online payment and payment by telephone are happy to see the wise use and development of fixed-line phone payment services.

Though fixed-line phone payment has its advantages and the industry chain has also gradually formed an awareness to cooperate and push forward business development, fixed-line phone payment services nevertheless still face various challenges. Firstly, fixed-line phone payment requires that end users have a card terminal, whose 500-600 Yuan price tag restricts many users' purchase demand. Consequently, terminal restrictions have long been a bottleneck in the expansion of fixed-line phone payment services. Secondly, fixed-line phone payment services involve cooperation between financial services institutions and telecom operators. While, strong-strong alliance is a good thing, the primary problem which they face is how to
compromise and form in-depth cooperation, and push forward industry development.

Thirdly, from the perspective of business development, hardware terminals are only a carrier. The key for business development lies in the content integrated into the terminals. Therefore, the urgent task for fixed-line phone payment services is to integrate rich value-added contents to terminals. However, telecom operators' advantages lie in their network resources, while China UnionPay/commercial banks' advantages lie in financial services. Therefore, it is necessary to cooperate with professional content producers and providers to develop services that meet user needs, guide and satisfy users' business demands and continue to improve user values.