Research On The Legal Supervision Of The Third-party Payment Platform Deposit Capital

The rise of the third-party payment platform has brought dramatic changes to our economic life. However, some deposit capital related problems emerges while people are enjoying the convenience brought by the third-party payment. These problems not only infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of the third-party payment platform users, but also hinder the smooth development of the electronic commerce industry. Therefore, it is necessary to supervise the deposit capital legally.This paper mainly discusses the legal supervision of the third-party payment platform deposit capital from four aspects.In the first part, the paper expounds the meaning of the third-party payment platform and the related types of payment platform, then introduces and analyzes several points of view on the definition of the third-party payment institutions. Secondly, it describes the causes and scale of the third-party payment platform deposit capital, and points out the problems existing in the supervision of deposit capital, including the ambiguous ownership of the interests of the deposit capital, the risk of being stolen and embezzled, single third-party payment regulator, excessive restriction on the use of deposit capital and lack of security assurance for deposit capital after the third-party payment institutions withdrawing from the market, etc.The second part discusses the legal basis for the supervision of the deposit capital. The first is the analysis of the basic premise of supervision, including the legal attribute of the deposit capital and the ownership of its interests; then there is an analysis on the theoretical basis for the obligation that the third-party payment institutions shall fulfill to guarantee the security of deposit capital in accordance with "Consumer Protection Law" and the "Contract Law". According to "Consumer Protection Law", the relationship between third-party payment institution and users features the formal equality and substantial inequality as existed between operators and consumers, as the former has an obligation to assure the capital security for the latter; whereas according to "Contract Law", there is a capital storage contract between the third-party payment institutions and users, and the former has funds safekeeping obligations to the latter.In the third part, it introduces the practical applications about the legal supervision on deposit capital. There are some relevant normative documents about the third-party payment in our country, such as the "non-financial institutions payment services administrative measures", "payment institutional clients reserve fund depository regulations"and its draft for comments. In order to learn some mature regulatory measures from the foreign practices to perfect the supervision system of our country, it describes the United States and the European Union regulations on the deposit capital.In the fourth part, it discusses legal regulations mainly from the perspectives of the supervision ideals, the regulatory body and the methods. First of all, we should focus on the safety assurance of the capital deposit, then allow qualified third-party payment institutions use some of the capital appropriately provided that they meet certain requirements. Secondly, in order to achieve a comprehensive and effective supervision upon the third-party payment institutions, we should establish a supervision system that revolves around the central bank with the cooperation of relevant department. Finally, we should improve the deposit capital regulatory measures from various aspects, including the rational use of deposit capital’s interest, establishing the market admittance system of the third-party payment, setting up risk margin of the institutions, perfecting the market withdrawal system of the third-party, confirming the civil liability of third-party payment institutions as well as appropriately enhancing the administrative punishment, and so on.