The location-based social app Momo (NASDAQ:MOMO) has added physical gifts and lucky money sending features to its latest version, launched on January 28.
Digital lucky money, or ‘Red Envelopes’, is available on many Chinese social platforms, including WeChat and Weibo. Thanks to WeChat’s iteration, launched one year ago, mobile digital lucky money became widely popular among Chinese users in 2014. Alipay Wallet, the mobile app for Alipay (the financial arm of Alibaba), recently revamped its lucky money feature, trying to challenge WeChat in the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays.
Not only can you purchase your Momo friends gifts, you can also ask them to pay for gifts you like. Alipay, is supporting the payments. All gifts are provided by third-party merchants with categories ranging from electronics products, cosmetics & fragrances and flowers to accessories.
Facebook ended physical goods sales in August 2013, less than one year after the launch of Gifts. The sales of physical goods were slow and only accounted for 20% of the total gift sales, as TechCrunch reported. We’ll see whether physical goods could become another meaningful revenue source for Momo.
Momo was listed on the NASDAQ last month. It had 180 million registered accounts, 60 million monthly active users, and 26 million daily active users as of September 2014. Membership subscription for premium services was the single biggest revenue source, accounting for 66% of total revenues in the second quarter of 2014. Some 29% was from mobile gaming over the same period. Momo has partnered with game developers to launch customized games and share in-app item sales, about 50%, with the latter. The rest of its revenues came from sticker sales and advertising.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketogtongues)