WeChat's hongbao usage soars during the Spring Festival

After the past three years of growth, instant messenger WeChat's red packets - or hongbao in Chinese - have become one of the most prevalent and popular aspects of the Spring Festival.

According to statistics provided by Tencent Holdings Ltd, the provider of the WeChat services, on Thursday, 46 billion red packets were sent and received during the six days from lunar New Year's Eve to the fifth day of the first lunar month (Jan 27 to Feb 1), up 43.3 percent year-on-year.

The Lunar New Year's Eve was the peak for the red packets, when a total of 14.2 billion red packets were sent and received on that day, up 75.7 percent year-on-year. A man in Shenzhen sent a record high 2,125 red packets on the day, while another man in Binzhou in eastern China's Shandong province got the most red packets, receiving 10,069 red envelopes.