Tencent claims surge in digital red envelopes over New Year

Tencent Holdings Ltd has reported a tenfold surge in the number of digital red envelopes, known as hongbao in Chinese, sent on WeChat during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, despite both its main Internet rivals launching campaigns to lure mobile-payment users.

Tencent said 516 million WeChat users exchanged 32.1 billion cash-filled virtual envelopes between Feb 7 and 12, compared with 3.27 billion last year.

The huge rise in number came as Baidu Inc and Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd both joined the competition, investing heavily to make exchanging digital envelopes a viral phenomenon during this year's holiday.