E-wallets are gearing up to offer online lucky money services as the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday approaches amid the third coronavirus outbreak in Vietnam.

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 tradition of giving small amounts of money in a red envelope to children for good luck in the new year and promoting cashless payments.

SmartPay, an e-wallet with about 3.7 million users, said that it implemented the online lucky money services from January to February 21. With each transfer of lucky money, users would receive a number for a lucky draw.

Momo is implementing online lucky money services for the third year running, from January 28 to March 5. For each transfer of online lucky money, 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 online lucky money service with promotions aimed to contribute to creating the habit of limiting the use of cash and small notes during Tet holiday.

Diep said that this was also an opportunity for goods and services suppliers and 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 money service also aimed to promote shopping and consumption on this e-commerce platform.

Truong Van Quy, director of online marketing firm EQVN, said the online lucky money service would bring two major benefits, attracting new users and implementing promotions provided by the e-wallets and partner retailers.

The online lucky money service was also a part of the effort to limit the use of cash and small notes during Tet, especially in the COVID-19 outbreak.

Recently, the Monetary Authority of Singapore was calling on residents to digitalise cash gifts for the Lunar New Year as a “new normal” after the onset of the pandemic with the expectation that it would help prevent the spread of the virus by discouraging crowds and also is good for the environment because the number of new bills issued could be reduced.

Quy said this was the way to go. However, it would take time to create the habit 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 money became popular. Statistics by Statista showed that about 823 million people received digital cash gifts for the Lunar New Year in 2019.

Experts also said that it was necessary to develop an ecosystem for digital money.

A recent report by global payments technology company Visa showed that the COVID-19 pandemic was changing the habit of small-sized enterprises. More than 28 percent started to implement marketing on social media, 27% of products and services were sold online and 20 percent accepted online and card payments.

A report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment showed that banking transfers remained the most dominant payment method in global trade every year, equivalent to US$330 billion.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) needed to start with the integration of payment solutions into their operations to optimise efficiency.