Alipay's 2016 'Collect Five Blessings' card game — 790K users split a 215M yuan pot

In early 2016, Alipay became the exclusive interactive partner of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala — the biggest television moment in China — paying 268.8 million yuan for the role. The prize was not just exposure but the social graph: after WeChat's red packets had made payments social, Alipay wanted users to add each other as friends inside its own app.

The original plan was hourly 'shake-style' cash red packets, but the team added a second layer that became the real invention: hidden 'fu' (blessing) cards. Users who collected all five — 富强, 爱国, 和谐, 友善 and 敬业 — could split a 215-million-yuan pool. The 敬业福 was deliberately rare, so finishing the set required adding friends, swapping cards and begging on social feeds. Product manager Chen Guanhua later called the card game 'a stroke of genius' that grew out of a scrapped applause-based idea.

The mechanics worked beyond expectation. On New Year's Eve, 'Xiuyixiu' interactions hit 324.5 billion, 29.5 times the previous year's gala; the first round alone logged 67.7 billion interactions in five minutes. 790,000 users completed the set and each received 271.66 yuan. Alipay said sponsorship and advertising revenue for the event exceeded the 268.8 million yuan partnership cost, so the campaign was profitable on top of building social connections.

In 2017 the idea matured into an AR game — point the camera at any '福' character, scan it, and collect blessings — with lower difficulty and a bigger budget. Alipay's executives scored the year's version 80 out of 100, participation grew, and partner apps reported concrete gains. The case page by agency 有门互动 described the result as a new finger-tip New Year ritual, turning the gala stunt into an annual habit.