At Chinese New Year, it’s tradition to give a bright, beautiful red envelope (known as 紅包, hóngbāo) filled with money to friends and family. It symbolizes good wishes and luck for the new year ahead.
Presently in China, people are shunning traditional stationery to send digital red packets to each other using WeChat Pay and Alipay. No matter how far away they are from each other, the red envelope will arrive in seconds, bringing along their best wishes and digital cash.
In 2020, WeChat Pay has witnessed a record of 823 million users sending and receiving red packages through the messaging app during the first six days of Lunar New Year starting from February 4.
Meanwhile Alipay, the mobile payment app owned by Alibaba, successfully attracted 330 million Alipay users to play a game designated for the traditional Lunar New Year using Red Packet QR codes.
Moreover, the “digital money” they send to each other through WeChat Pay or AliPay, the Red Packet is not only a good wish but also real money which they can transfer to their bank accounts or make purchases worldwide. Nowadays, more and more Chinese people are shopping around the world, bringing their new payment methods as well.
While many countries still struggled to promote mobile payments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, China was already leading the rest of the world in building up a cashless society, being Alipay and WeChat Pay the two big leaders of the online payment market in China.
PayXpert is the official partner of WeChat Pay and Alipay in Europe, and we offer different solutions to all kinds of business so you can interact with your Chinese clients via Red Packet.
Find out more about our payments platform at Alipay and WeChat Pay.
