Giving lucky money or "red envelopes" to family and friends is a long-fixed tradition during China's Lunar New Year. That tradition went a bit high-tech this year as more than eight million mobile users embraced a new feature on WeChat to electronically send out millions in lucky money.

Estimates indicate that more than 40 million electronic "red envelopes" with a value of around 400 million RMB were sent through WeChat, Tencent's social media platform.

Alipay also launched a red envelope function that saw more than 200 million yuan worth of red envelopes go through its platform during the Spring Festival.

The use of "red envelopes" helped Alipay and WeChat gain millions of mobile users who linked their bank cards to their online accounts.

Experts expect that there will be a fierce fight in the third-party payment market as more and more consumers take advantage of mobile payment functions.

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