E-wallets are launching online lucky money services as an effort to limit the use of cash and small notes during the Lunar New Year Holiday (Photo: vnexpress.net) Online lucky money was implemented with the spirit of preserving the traditionof giving small amounts of money in a red envelope to children for good luck inthe new year and promoting cashless payments.
SmartPay, an e-wallet with about 3.7 million users, said that it implementedthe online lucky money services from January to February 21. With each transferof lucky money, users would receive a number for a lucky draw.
Momo is implementing online lucky money services for the third yearrunning, from January 28 to March 5. For each transfer of online luckymoney, Momo users would get the chance to win gifts or vouchers.
ViettelPay and AirPay would start this service this week.
According to Nguyen Ba Diep, co-founder and deputy chairman of Momo, the onlinelucky money service with promotions aimed to contribute to creating the habitof limiting the use of cash and small notes during Tet holiday.
Diep said that this was also an opportunity for goods and services suppliersand the e-wallet’s partners to approach 23 million Momo users.
For AirPay which was a part of the ecosystem of Shopee, the online lucky moneyservice also aimed to promote shopping and consumption on this e-commerceplatform.
Truong Van Quy, director of online marketing firm EQVN, said the online luckymoney service would bring two major benefits, attracting new users andimplementing promotions provided by the e-wallets and partner retailers.
The online lucky money service was also a part of the effort to limit the useof cash and small notes during Tet, especially in the COVID-19 outbreak.
Recently, the Monetary Authority of Singapore was calling on residents todigitalise cash gifts for the Lunar New Year as a “new normal” after the onsetof the pandemic with the expectation that it would help prevent the spread ofthe virus by discouraging crowds and also is good for the environment becausethe number of new bills issued could be reduced.
Quy said this was the way to go. However, it would take time to create thehabit of using digital money.
Currently, online lucky money is mainly popular among young people.
First introduced in China by WeChat and Tencent in 2014, online lucky moneybecame popular. Statistics by Statista showed that about 823 million peoplereceived digital cash gifts for the Lunar New Year in 2019.
Experts also said that it was necessary to develop an ecosystem for digitalmoney.
A recent report by global payments technology company Visa showed that theCOVID-19 pandemic was changing the habit of small-sized enterprises. More than28 percent started to implement marketing on social media, 27 percent ofproducts and services were sold online and 20 percent accepted online andcard payments.
A report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment showed that bankingtransfers remained the most dominant payment method in global trade every year,equivalent to 330 billion USD.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) needed to start with the integrationof payment solutions into their operations to optimise efficiency./.
VNA
