红包大战 (hongbao dazhan): Battle of the red envelopes

A Spring Festival red-envelope war started after online payment operator Alipay began to give gift money cash and vouchers to its users on Feb 11. Mobile payment terminals, social network apps and offline businesses have all participated in this Spring Festival promotion campaign, which attracts wide public concern.

China's three major Internet companies Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have joined hands with numerous businesses to invest in the campaign for Spring Festival red envelopes. As the originator of giving gift money to users, Chinese popular mobile messaging app WeChat, run by Tencent, has declared that it will join its cooperative business partners to send about 500 million yuan in ($80 million) cash gifts and more than 3 billion yuan in gift vouchers to its users.

The Spring Festival gift money campaign is a typical online to offline business strategy for the mobile payment platforms. The users get actual benefits in the form of cash or vouchers, but the campaign also benefits online and offline businesses, as the cash money and vouchers given to users stimulate e-buying and mobile payments.