WeChat red envelope  WeChat red envelope (or WeChat red packet) is a mobile application developed by Chinese technology company Tencent. The concept, also offered by its market competitors Alibaba and Baidu, is based on the Chinese tradition of "hongbao" (red envelope, or red packet), where money is given to family and friends as a gift. The application was launched by Tencent in January 2014 and has subsequently gained popularity, with Tencent reporting 2.3 billion transactions on 1 January 2016 alone. The application offers users the ability to give monetary gifts in the form of virtual 'credits' to other users of the application. Money is deposited into a user's WeChat Pay account, which can be used for purchases. The app allows withdrawals from that account. There are two types of 'red envelopes' offered by the app: the pairwise red packets, via which money is sent from a private chat of two users, and the group red packets, where money is distributed in a group chat. The 'grouped' red envelope can then be posted to a group chat and the application randomly assigns the amount in each envelope to each recipient. Since WeChat launched its virtual red envelope campaign in 2014, WeChat Pay has more than doubled its market share. In 2014, WeChat partnered with the Spring Festival Gala and introduced the WeChat red envelope shake. During the gala, users were invited to shake their smartphones for a chance to win red envelopes. A total of 1.2 billion red envelopes, worth over half a billion RMB ($83 million USD), were sent out during the promotion. The number of shakes during the gala promotion achieved a total frequency of 11 billion and a peak of 810 million per minute. To win red envelopes, some people shook multiple smartphones to increase their chance of winning, and some people put their smartphones and tablets in a sieve to shake them simultaneously. The Red Envelope War is a financial battle between the two Internet companies competing for the mobile payment market in China. The competition attracted widespread attention from the public. On February 10, 2015, Alibaba announced it would give away RMB600 million (around US$97m) of “lucky money” to users, with RMB156 million in cash and RMB430 million of e-coupons from merchants on its marketplaces. Half a day after Alibaba’s announcement, WeChat announced it would give away RMB500 million (around US$81m) cash and RMB3 billion (around US$484m) of e-coupons the next night.