shared a link post in group #A Glance of China 行摄中国
The Chinese New Year is approaching – and that means preparing “red packets” for friends, neighbors and others. Some, like me, prefer the old fashioned way: stuffing new banknotes in red paper envelopes.
But in China, the tradition long ago went “virtual”, facilitated by smartphone-based payment apps, which soon became a new battleground for Chinese tech giants hell bent on boosting traffic in their respective internet ecosystems.
Just over a decade ago, Tencent Holdings created a sensation when it gave away 500 million yuan (US$72 million) in digital red packets for the Spring Festival (aka Lunar New Year), in a WeChat Pay campaign aimed at disrupting the dominance of Alipay, owned by Alibaba Group Holding.
On Chinese New Year’s Eve in 2015, hundreds of millions of young Chinese were obsessed with trying to grab as many virtual “red envelopes” as they could, with the total amounts reaching billions of yuan.
Needless to say, the focus of the red packet battles this year is #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 apps.
#Going to China 🇨🇳 #A Glance of China 行摄中国
https://www.scmp.com/tech..
