Prepaid Consumption Legal Regulation From The Perspective Of Private Law

Prepaid consumption with the feature of "first payment consumption" performs long-term debt continuing to consumer service contract. Usually, the carrier of consumption is the commercial prepaid card. As a kind of transaction, prepaid consumption could help operators finance the funds, accelerate the flow of funds, alleviate the financial pressure and provide stable consumer groups. Also, prepaid consumption is good to consumers to reduce the cost of consumption, bring more advantages in price and make the consumption more convenient. However, the prepaid consumption also has many legal risks and has caused many legal disputes while promoting economic development. Therefore, the Chinese government has launched some normative documents to guide and regulate it. On theory research, to the legal issues involved in prepaid consumption, scholars mainly research the prepaid consumption administrative supervision system from the perspective of public law. But there are few related theoretical results of the systematic discussion on the legal relation of contract and protection to consumer’s legitimate rights and interests from the private law. The current "contract law", "civil law" and other related systems cannot effectively adjust to the contract rights and obligations in the prepaid consumption. Especially, the current legal provisions cannot effectively relief consumers when their rights are damaged. So it is necessary to discuss the problems, such as the nature of prepaid consumption in legal relationship, the content of the rights and obligations, and the share in legal liability.This text is divided four parts. First of all, with related concepts of commercial prepaid cards, after the analysis and comparison among the offer-- promise, appointment – contract, and consumer service contract, the basic meaning of the prepaid consumption is clear, the nature of prepaid consumption is defined, and the legal characteristics of prepaid consumption risk are summarized, include unilateral, continuing and financial etc. Secondly, combined with the disputes and problems of prepaid consumption practice in our country, the relevant legal system in China is conducted to a comprehensive review and analysis, especially the defects of private law. The main legal problems of China’s prepaid consumption are pointed out, include consumer service disputes caused by the lack of written contract, unclear liability for breach of contract form, unguaranteed consumer rights and the transaction security issues. Thirdly, analysis and research on the foreign legal regulation and the prepaid consumption in Taiwan, provide inspiration and reference for our establishment and perfection of system. Finally, on the basis of previous research, the suggestions on perfecting the legal regulation of the prepaid consumption have the detailed argumentation. First, making the prepaid consumer service contract format, to clear operators should record or not, and the contents of the rights and obligations of both parties in a standardized form. Second, in order to safeguard the fairness and justice, according to the different cases of default, to clear prepaid consumer liability for breach of contract form is necessary. Third, to the problem that consumers’ legitimate rights and interests are easily damaged such as the right to know, the right to privacy of consumers and even bargain, put forward relief proposals through the improvement of consumer’s right to terminate the contract, right to change and right of claim indemnity. Fourth, for consumers are vulnerable to be cheated, prepaid funds cannot be guaranteed, and the absence of transaction security, the proposal is that with diversified performance guarantee system, clear performance guarantee way, the conditions to realize and the legal effect, to maintain the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and protect the security of transactions.