What do payments mean in the e-commerce domain?

As a payments product manager with over 5 years of experience in the e-commerce industry, I want to kick off a new series reflecting on my learnings. I wish I had known these when I first stepped into the payments domain. My hope is that this series will be helpful to your product management career, whether you're just entering the payments space or simply curious about what a payments PM does and thinks.

This is the first post in the series, and it will cover the scope of payments in e-commerce.

E-commerce Business Models

The e-commerce landscape is fundamentally shaped by two primary business models: B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer).

In the B2C model, a consumer interacts with a business (merchant) operating an e-commerce platform. In the C2C model, also known as a marketplace model, consumers exist on both sides of the transaction, with the merchant serving as a transaction facilitator.

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Payment Activities

In the B2C model, two major activities are included in the payments domain: pay-in and settlement. Pay-in represents the process of the consumers making payments to the merchant (platform) to get goods/services. Settlement refers to the subsequent money movement, where the merchant receives the collected funds from third-party payment service providers.

In the C2C model, the merchant collects money from one-sided consumers (e.g., buyers) and then transfers earnings to consumers on the other side (e.g., sellers). Therefore, in addition to pay-in and settlement, two additional activities are introduced: payout and KYC.

Payout refers to the process by which the merchant transfers earnings to sellers. KYC (Know Your Customer) is a process to verify the identity of the payout target (e.g., the seller) to prevent AML (Anti-Money Laundering) risks. KYC ensures the platform's financial integrity and compliance.

To sum up, there are four major payment activities in e-commerce: (1) pay-in, (2) settlement, (3) payout, and (4) KYC. A payments PM's primary focus is to optimize these activities to provide smooth payment experiences for consumers while reducing the payment processing cost at each step to increase the company's profit.

In the upcoming post of the series, we'll explore the major participants involved in the payment flow to have a comprehensive view.

(Created by Napkin AI)

(Traditional Chinese version / 正體中文版本)

什麼是電商金流？

身為一位在電商（電子商務）工作 5 年以上經驗的金流產品經理，我想開始一個新的系列文章來反思我的學習歷程。這個系列文章是我希望自己在踏入金流領域時就能了解的知識，希望能對即將進入或是單純對金流領域有興趣的 PM 有所幫助。

這是這個系列的第一篇文章，將介紹電商的金流領域。

電子商務商業模式

電子商務基本上由兩種主要商業模式塑造：B2C (Business-to-Consumer) 和 C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)。

在 B2C 模式中，消費者與經營電子商務平台的企業（商家）互動。C2C 模式，也稱為 marketplace，消費者存在於交易的兩側，商家擔任交易的協調者。

(Created by Napkin AI)

金流活動

在B2C模式中，金流包括兩個主要活動：支付 (pay-in) 和結算 (settlement)。支付是指從消費者付款給商家（平台）以取得商品或服務的過程。結算是指商家收到從第三方金流服務提供者撥付的資金。

在C2C模式中，商家從一邊的消費者（例如，買家）收取資金，然後將收益轉移給另一邊的消費者（例如，賣家）。因此，除了收款和結算外，還多增加兩個額外的活動：出金 (payout) 和 KYC (Know Your Customer)。

出金是指商家轉移賣家收益給賣家的過程。KYC（了解你的客戶）是驗證出金對象（例如賣家）身分的過程，以防止反洗錢（AML）風險並確保平台符合法令遵循。

總結而言，電子商務中有四個主要支付活動：(1) 支付，(2) 結算，(3) 出金，(4) KYC。金流產品經理的工作重點是優化這些活動，為消費者提供流暢的支付體驗，同時降低每個步驟的成本，以增加公司利潤。

本系列的下一篇文章將探討涉及金流的主要參與者，以獲得更廣的視角。

(Created by Napkin AI)