Reports indicate that the "red envelope" battle during the Spring Festival tests the clearing and settlement capabilities, with Tencent stating it will strengthen its cybersecurity protection system

According to Beijing Business Today, the "red envelope" battle during the Spring Festival in mainland China has reignited. Recently, Tencent (00700.HK) launched a cash red envelope of 1 billion yuan through its Yuanbao App, while Baidu-SW (09888.HK) tied 500 million yuan in red envelopes to its Wenxin Assistant AI effects and card collection gameplay. Alibaba-W (09988.HK) introduced a 3 billion yuan "treat plan" through its Qianwen App, and ByteDance's Doubao distributed 100,000 tech gifts and cash red envelopes of up to 8,888 yuan during the Spring Festival Gala. Major players are ramping up their efforts, with AI integration and scenario binding becoming new highlights, and the scale of red envelope distribution reaching new heights.

However, compared to the lively scene of C-end (client-side) users scrambling for coupons, the underlying B-end (business-side) payment settlement battle is actually more disruptive to the industry. Industry insiders believe that behind the red envelope battle, payment settlement capability is also a key measure of the core competitiveness of payment institutions. The grand red envelope feast of the giants is backed by the accuracy of clearing transactions at a rate of millions per second and the timeliness of settlements. This red envelope war is essentially a comprehensive contest of technical strength, compliance levels, and ecological synergy capabilities. Behind the Spring Festival red envelope battle is also a major test of payment settlement.

Regarding countermeasures, reporters interviewed several payment institutions. Tencent responded that every year during the Spring Festival holiday is a peak period for WeChat Pay transactions, which tests the high performance and stability of the payment system. In recent years, Tencent Financial Technology has continuously built multi-location, multi-center financial-grade data clusters to maintain a level of millions of concurrent transactions, and based on a high availability rate of 99.999%, it is exploring the creation of an ultra-unitized architecture to ensure the independence and isolation of each unit. In the event of a sudden failure in any unit, it can achieve second-level switching of transaction flow between units, ensuring that the user payment experience is not affected.

As for payment security, Tencent further stated that Tencent Financial Technology continuously applies cutting-edge technologies to build a network security protection system, strengthening the network security protection framework and enhancing network security capabilities. Currently, it has established a three-layer automated security audit system for preventing network attacks and data breaches: an external anti-intrusion defense line that accurately intercepts malicious behaviors such as brute force cracking and disguise attacks.

Su Xiaorui, a senior researcher at Suxi Zhiyan, pointed out that platforms are currently deeply binding their clearing and settlement capabilities with their own ecological scenarios. From the existing platform resource capabilities, platforms represented by WeChat focus on a "social + payment closed loop," which can leverage clearing and settlement capabilities to complete the closed-loop experience of "sending red envelopes - grabbing red envelopes - cash payment." In contrast, platforms represented by Douyin and Meituan-W (03690.HK) have a large number of local life merchant resources, which can ensure that users can complete payments "on the spot" without feeling it when redeeming at offline merchants through the clearing and settlement system, thereby enhancing the efficiency of online traffic conversion to offline consumption while consolidating the competitiveness of local life scenarios.

Industry insiders believe that after the noise of the red envelope battle subsides, clearing and settlement capabilities are also becoming a key measure of the core competitiveness of payment institutions. This battle of clearing and settlement is essentially a comprehensive contest of technical strength, compliance levels, and ecological synergy capabilities Analysis indicates that future competition will focus on the flexible expansion capabilities of clearing and settlement frameworks, the level of intelligent reconciliation and automated error handling, support for programmable clearing and settlement with digital RMB, and integrated clearing and settlement capabilities for cross-border multi-currency transactions