Giving red envelopes, or lucky money, is a tradition for Chinese people on festivals, anniversaries and birthdays, but a new trend of giving online red envelopes has become popular since the Spring Festival in 2015.

Sharing of on-line red envelopes reaches new high

This is in part due to the messaging app WeChat, and the company behind it, Tencent. The red envelope business reached a record peak at the beginning of 2016. Tencent announced that 2.3 billion red envelopes were sent and received by WeChat users in the first 24 hours of 2016.

The company has not revealed how much money those red envelopes contained, but it is very proud of the number of people using the service. Tencent also disclosed where the most red envelopes were sent and received in China.

Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai are among the biggest givers and receivers. The fewest were given in the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, where only 11 red envelopes were sent.

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