Why did Alipay copy WeChat’s red envelope function?

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On July 8, Alipay released the latest version 9.0. In this version, Alipay replaced the brand new blue logo and added new functions such as chatting and sending red envelopes. However, regarding Alipay's "Friends" interface, many netizens complained that it was a pixel-level imitation of WeChat. Regardless of the outside world's praise or ridicule, at least Alipay has won sufficient attention. After a gust of wind, let's take a look at Alipay's official statement: we hope to provide users with more functions throughout various scenarios in daily life.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this statement that the word "scenario" has been discussed so hotly. In our opinion, the reason why Alipay launched the "Friends" interface and the red envelope function is to enter an important scenario - the social payment scenario.
The so-called “social payment scenario”

We usually classify individual payment behaviors in modern life by the means of payment. The more commonly used ones are as follows: cash payment, which is the most traditional one; card payment, which is achieved by swiping a bank card on a POS machine, getting rid of the restriction of carrying cash; online payment, which gets rid of the dual constraints of cash and bank card media.

Especially the latter, with the development of the Internet, it has been increasingly extended to mobile terminals, making online payment methods more and more diverse and increasingly penetrating into people's lives. In fact, I once saw such an answer on Zhihu: In Hangzhou, as long as you carry a mobile phone with the Alipay APP and your Alipay account is bound to a bank card, you can completely realize electronic consumption in all aspects of food, clothing, housing and transportation.

This classification method certainly makes sense, but it fails to grasp the essence; especially when smartphones have become widely popular and online payments have been fully integrated into our lives, we should consider it even more. Payment itself is not just as simple as buying things. It is essentially an act of communication between people using currency as the medium. It is reflected in two aspects: one is material, and the other is emotional.

Let's talk about material things first. The material things mentioned here are not limited to tangible objects, but also include services that cannot be seen or touched but still need to be purchased; we are referring to all purchases that occur between strangers. In this kind of purchase, both parties are just trying to complete the transaction; when the transaction is completed, the payment relationship between the two parties has ended. Therefore, this kind of payment behavior is short-term and one-time.

Let's talk about emotions. This mainly refers to the fact that in a stable relationship between people, there are always various emotions; whether this emotion is positive or negative, as long as it exists, it needs to be communicated in various ways. Among them, monetary exchange is an inevitable and always-present one when people maintain their relationship with each other (this is not to emphasize the importance of money in interpersonal relationships, but to objectively discuss the existence of monetary exchange in communication between people). And this kind of exchange is long-term and sustainable.

We believe that since people make payments while maintaining the emotional foundation of stable daily relationships, and this payment behavior is continuous, when the objective existence of this behavior is mapped onto the Internet, the so-called "social payment scenario" is created.
Take WeChat red envelope as an example

If we want to give a typical example of winning users by grasping the "social payment scenario", we have to bring out the only protagonist in this field before - WeChat red envelopes. Although it has only become popular in the past two years, using WeChat red envelopes in life has become a normal part of people's lives.

According to the data released by Tencent in June this year, WeChat has 549 million monthly active users, and WeChat Pay users have reached 400 million. It should be noted that WeChat launched the WeChat Pay function in August 2013, less than two years ago; and the reason why WeChat Pay has been able to gain such a large number of users at a rocket-like speed in two years is that WeChat red envelopes based on the "social payment scenario" can be said to have made great contributions.

In fact, the launch of WeChat red envelopes on January 28, 2014 can be said to be a marketing campaign aimed at the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival. But unexpectedly, it not only became popular for a while, but also survived. We don’t need to fiddle with data to prove how popular WeChat red envelopes are, but we need to explore how WeChat red envelopes have completely occupied the "social payment scene".

1. WeChat red envelopes help people avoid the embarrassment and trouble of using paper cash in social situations. One is to avoid embarrassment; money is a sensitive word in Chinese social relationships, especially in many social occasions where currency exchange is required, it would be a bit embarrassing if people took out naked cash, and WeChat red envelopes provide a better-looking and more recognizable name for this kind of currency exchange. Another is to save trouble, just click lightly, and the red envelope has been sent successfully, which is naturally much more convenient.

2. Grabbing red envelopes has become a game of luck. In traditional scenarios, the game of grabbing red envelopes cannot be played anyway; imagine that the boss takes out some money and puts it in a red envelope, and then puts it on the table, and then many employees desperately try to grab it in public. Not only is the scene too ugly, but the amount of money each person gets is also limited by the face value. But if it is a WeChat red envelope, not only can everyone grab it "elegantly", but the amount of the red envelope is also completely allocated by the system, which has a sense of "trying luck", and another important point is that you can get the red envelope amount accurate to two decimal places, which is something that cash red envelopes can never do.

3. From a social perspective, WeChat red envelopes have become a part of people's daily communication, just like text, pictures, emoticons, and voice. This means that social payment has gained temporal continuity. During the process of sending and receiving WeChat red envelopes, people will accumulate a certain balance in their WeChat wallets. And since these balances can still be changed through WeChat red envelopes, people will not immediately withdraw the balance from their WeChat wallets to their bank cards, which greatly increases the user stickiness of the entire WeChat payment system.

From the above three points, we can see that WeChat relied on its natural mobile social advantages and creatively combined it with WeChat payment to launch the WeChat red envelopes that everyone likes very much, thus seizing the "social payment scenario" we mentioned and completing the transformation from a newborn to a payment tycoon in two years.
Is there any hope for Alipay?

After talking about WeChat red envelopes, let's take a look at the revised Alipay. After making "Friends" one of its main functions, does Alipay have the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity to copy WeChat and board the express train of "social payment scene", so as to make itself stronger and become the overlord in the third-party payment field?

In the face of this problem, we must go back to the "social payment scenario" itself to discuss. The realization of the "social payment scenario" requires two key points: one is social interaction, and the other is payment. Tencent happens to have both of these points; it is precisely by relying on its excellent social skills and the well-established Tenpay payment system that it has completed the use of the "social payment scenario". On the other hand, although Alibaba, the company behind Alipay, has been trying hard to promote Laiwang for a period of time, it is really weak in competition and social incompetent; only in payment, Alibaba has rich experience, deep technical accumulation and a large number of real-name users, which can be said to have a full advantage. So, if Tencent "enters the social payment scenario from social interaction", then Alibaba can only "enter the social payment scenario from payment", which seems to be a little more difficult.

But it is not hopeless. After all, Alipay has a large number of real-name users. The mobile Alipay app can obtain the user's relationship chain by reading the contacts on the user's phone, and then establish friendships between Alipay users through recommendations.

In this way, even if people still prefer to use WeChat for text chat, voice chat and other social activities, if the next time friends have a dinner and need to pay for everything, then when sending red envelopes, it is not necessarily necessary to use WeChat red envelopes, but also Alipay red envelopes. Although Alipay red envelopes will never replace WeChat red envelopes, users will now have an additional option in the "social payment scenario". For users, this option may just be an additional way to pay; for Alipay, it is the biggest opportunity for the "social payment scenario" supported by a huge number of users.

This is probably the reason why the new version of Alipay copied WeChat and even inherited the location of the "red envelope" at pixel level.