Across Chinese communities in Asia, it is routine for people to give money in a red envelope, known as hongbao, at this time of year.
In mainland China, groups such as Ant and Tencent have long offered digitized versions of the hongbao traditions so that people can pass these gifts through their phones. WeChat Pay launched them in 2014. Thanks to the pandemic, the e-hongbao is now taking off across Asia, too.
In January, Singapore’s UOB allowed customers to send red packets digitally through its UOB Mighty mobile banking app. This is sold as both a health and an environmental benefit.
“The contactless nature of e-hongbaos enables our customers to continue the tradition of gifting their loved ones with red packets safely as they celebrate the Year of the Ox virtually amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic,” says Jacquelyn Tan, UOB’s head of group personal financial services.
“We have also reduced the number of red packets printed by about 30% as part of our ongoing efforts to decrease paper consumption.”
Incentive
As an incentive, UOB is rewarding customers for making this unromantic but responsible shift, with prodigious use of the number eight, which is lucky to the Chinese. The bank will give S$8 ($6) to the first 388 customers who register their account for the PayNow digital transfer system, and 88 customers will win S$188 for sending e-hongbaos.
It’s not just UOB. DBS, OCBC, Citi and Standard Chartered are all known to be offering e-hongbao for Chinese New year, whose first day falls on February 12 this year.
In the background is the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which wants to encourage e-gifting to keep queues down at bank branches – a common problem at this time of year as people seek crisp new banknotes for their red envelopes.
There is certainly plenty of headroom. In 2019 in China, 823 million people sent e-hongbao through Tencent’s WeChat Pay system. However, that is 144 times Singapore’s population, so probably out of reach for the city state.
