For those of you who aren’t aware, Asia was awash with celebration last night as hundreds of millions of people gathered to celebrate the Chinese New Year. One of the traditions during this holiday is to give each other gifts and WeChat decided to add a modern twist to the tradition by enabling users to send virtual red envelopes to each other that contained actual cash. In less than a day, more than one billion of these envelopes were exchanged across Asia.
Last night was Chinese New Year’s Eve. Amidst all the other festivities, China’s WeChat users sent each other an astonishing 1.01 billion red envelopes (pictured above), the social media company revealed this afternoon. The virtual red envelopes stuffed with actual cash, which mirror a long-held gift-giving tradition at Chinese New Year, are a growing trend in China as people make more use of online payment methods. The 1.01 billion tally of WeChat hong bao represents stratospheric growth from last year’s number, when WeChat users sent only 20 million to each other. This year’s total covers only transactions from 8pm yesterday to 12:48am today, while last year’s number accrued over two days. Tencent, the maker of WeChat, didn’t reveal how much actual money was transferred in the billion-plus red envelopes.
NOTE: TECHi Two-Takes are the stories we have chosen from the web along with a little bit of our opinion in a paragraph. Please check the original story in the Source Button below.
TECHi weighs both sides before reaching a conclusion.
TECHi’s editorial take above outlines the reasoning that supports this position.
It's almost as hard for Chinese companies to break out of the country as it is for Western companies to…
Somewhere around 600 million people live in the Chinese countryside, and Alibaba has spent years trying to turn them into customers.…
Chinese companies used to be able to make some serious cash by creating a decent iPhone clone and then selling…
Xiaomi is second only to Uber in terms of how much people are anticipating its IPO, and although CEO Lei Jun…
