Yoors
Premium
The red envelope war in 2018 China’s New Year digital gift giving shows how the country’s fintec
The red envelope war in 2018
China’s New Year digital gift giving shows how the country’s fintech industry is moving ahead of the rest of the world
By Professor Michael R. Wade
with Jialu Shan
In a tradition spanning more than 500 years, Chinese people have been giving each other money in red envelopes, called hongbao, as part of the annual Lunar New Year celebrations. These hongbao have now become the latest battleground between China’s two digital behemoths, Alibaba and Tencent.
It all started in 2014 when Tencent introduced a way for users to send a digital version of red envelopes to friends and family via WeChat, its blockbuster messaging platform. By the following year, Tencent had partnered with China Central Television (CCTV) as the official red envelope distributor during the five-hour New Year TV gala show, the largest entertainment show in the world with more than 700 million viewers. The move proved to be a great success. The WeChat digital red envelope quickly gained popularity and, as a result, millions of users tied their bank cards to a WeChat account.
Since then, the digital red envelope has become a new tradition. According to Tencent, WeChat users sent 47 billion red envelopes to one another in the 6 days around New Year in 2017. A total of 14.2 billion red envelopes were exchanged on New Year’s Eve alone, a year-on-year increase of more than 75% (refer to Figure 1).
Figure 1, Number of digital red envelopes exchanged on #WeChat
China’s New Year digital gift giving shows how the country’s fintech industry is moving ahead of the rest of the world
By Professor Michael R. Wade
with Jialu Shan
In a tradition spanning more than 500 years, Chinese people have been giving each other money in red envelopes, called hongbao, as part of the annual Lunar New Year celebrations. These hongbao have now become the latest battleground between China’s two digital behemoths, Alibaba and Tencent.
It all started in 2014 when Tencent introduced a way for users to send a digital version of red envelopes to friends and family via WeChat, its blockbuster messaging platform. By the following year, Tencent had partnered with China Central Television (CCTV) as the official red envelope distributor during the five-hour New Year TV gala show, the largest entertainment show in the world with more than 700 million viewers. The move proved to be a great success. The WeChat digital red envelope quickly gained popularity and, as a result, millions of users tied their bank cards to a WeChat account.
Since then, the digital red envelope has become a new tradition. According to Tencent, WeChat users sent 47 billion red envelopes to one another in the 6 days around New Year in 2017. A total of 14.2 billion red envelopes were exchanged on New Year’s Eve alone, a year-on-year increase of more than 75% (refer to Figure 1).
Figure 1, Number of digital red envelopes exchanged on #WeChat
Like
- Report this post
