WeChat Red Packets Drove Bank-Card Binding Surge During 2014 Lunar New Year

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In late 2013, Alipay dominated Chinese digital payments while WeChat Pay was only months old and most users had no reason to link a bank card. A nine-person WeChat team built a lightweight HTML5 red packet feature in about two weeks. During the 2014 Spring Festival, it sparked a wave of voluntary bank-card bindings without any user subsidies. The feature borrowed the traditional Lunar New Year custom of giving cash in red envelopes, and its random-split group version kept chats engaged. The approach drew praise from Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who called it a flawlessly executed surprise attack.

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