Alibaba’s Alipay users gift US$642M in cash to their buddies for Chinese New Year

Last night was Chinese New Year’s Eve, when the lunar new year festivities kicked off with family reunions, big dinners, fireworks, and red envelopes stuffed with cash. That last tradition is increasingly shifting online in China. Alibaba just revealed that users of its Alipay Wallet app sent a grand total of RMB 4 billion in cash, which is US$642 million, to their friends and family members during the 24-hour period of Chinese New Year’s Eve.

That’s up a great deal from RMB 200 million (US$32.1 million) gifted via Alipay during the full seven-day Chinese New Year holiday last year, explains a representative from Alibaba’s financial services subsidiary, Ant Financial, to Tech in Asia.

Alipay – which claims to have over 190 million users – first took the traditional red envelopes online in 2012. This year, Alipay Wallet users shared their cash gifts by issuing a 6 to 8-digit code, replacing the earlier method of using QR codes.

Battle for mobile wallet users

The annual gift-giving has turned into a repeated battle between Alibaba’s Alipay Wallet and Tencent’s WeChat (which has a WeChat Payment wallet feature) as the tech titans use the festivities as a way of bringing in new users to their mobile wallet services. Tencent has not yet issued any data about what went on yesterday.

Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma joined in the cash giveaways on Alipay Wallet by handing out 999,999 red envelopes to random users. The company didn’t indicate how much money that involved. Ironically, Jack Ma didn’t give out Chinese New Year bonuses to Alibaba employees this year, instead indicating in a post on his Weibo page that the “reason for not distributing red envelopes is that in the past year, Alibaba Group has not had exceptional results and not had any special surprises.” He added that Alibaba’s record-breaking IPO was not reason enough for bonuses, and he cautioned staffers “not let ourselves be lost in illusory fame.”

See: Chinese New Year TV extravaganza uses WeChat in an amazing way to give out $80M in cash