eLaisee Gifting Enhancement
Drove +19% YoY in eLaisee sent by securing the gifting flow without disrupting the ritual
PayMe's eLaisee feature lets 3.2M users send digital red packets via payment links during Chinese New Year, it's a seasonal favourite that drives real transaction volume and genuine delight. New Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) security requirements meant the payment link flow had to go, and I had three months to replace it before the holiday.
Problem
How might we make eLaisee safer and more occasion-flexible without losing the virality users looked forward to every CNY?
Outcome
I redesigned the collection experience to be fully app-native, eliminating the fraud-prone links while keeping the ritual intact – a tighter, safer flow that users didn't notice had changed.
Role
Lead UX & Product Designer
Timeline
3 months (Oct 2023 - Jan 2024)
Outcome
The redesign directly improved safety and reduced friction, leading to strong lifts across key engagement and transaction metrics. Year over year, more users sent eLaisee, more packets were collected, and total gifting volume continued to climb.
19%
YoY increase in eLaisee amount sent
13%
YoY increase in collected amounts
8%
YoY increase in user sending eLaisee
What's PayMe eLaisee feature?
Laisee (利是 🧧) is Hong Kong's most beloved Chinese New Year (CNY) custom, a red packet of "lucky money" gifted to friends and family as a symbol of prosperity.
PayMe's eLaisee has modernised this ritual since its launch in 2022: users personalise a greeting, set a fixed or random amount, and send it to up to 100 recipients at once. It's one of PayMe's most culturally resonant features, and every CNY it drives a meaningful spike in seasonal growth – which made the stakes of getting this redesign right especially high.
The problem
Payment links made eLaisee viral, yet fraudulent. With incidents rising 43% in Hong Kong and HKMA tightening controls, the links had to go.
The challenge was replacing the links without breaking what 3.2M users loved, before Chinese New Year. It also raised a bigger question to our team: if users embraced digital gifting for CNY, why stop there?
How I approached it
My first direction was a "Laisee Group" – a shared space where users could send, collect, and interact around eLaisee beyond the holiday season. The long-term vision was compelling: group bill-splitting, merchant engagement, richer social interactions.
Mockup for "Laisee Group" key screens
Problem statement
"How might we replace payment links with a safer alternative without making eLaisee harder to share, before Chinese New Year?"
Trade-off & solutions
Unfortunately, user testing and engineering sizing both pointed the same way: the Laisee Group concept was too broad, with limited use case outside CNY, and couldn't ship in one PI without missing the holiday entirely.
We deprioritized it. I scoped three targeted improvements the night after PI planning kicked off and aligned the team early, keeping scope tight to hit the three-month deadline.
Instant collection
I designed an app-native "close loop". Users receive a push notification and collect eLaisee with a single tap, no link required. Privacy-by-default protections keep personal details hidden between users who aren't PayMe friends.
New "Collect" entry point
Testing showed users instinctively looked to the Laisee tab under "Quick Actions" when scanning a Laisee QR code. I added a "Collect" entry point in the modal, the natural place to reach for when someone hands you their phone.
QR code share modal with seasonal skins
I replaced links with unique QR codes and partnered with the campaign designer on four CNY skins, including one for the Year of the Dragon. Users are able to pick their design in the share modal and send it however they like.
Micro-moments,
macro delight ✨
Security fixes rarely make a product feel better, I used this one as an opportunity to do both.
I designed custom illustrations and built all animations from scratch in Illustrator, After Effects, and LottieFiles – drawing on the dragon dance, a CNY tradition every Hong Konger recognises, to craft micro-interactions that felt festive without feeling heavy.
What started as a compliance fix became the foundation for something bigger.
The QR share modal I designed laid the groundwork for eLaisee to grow beyond CNY. In 2025, the team rolled out wedding and birthday themes on top of the same share infrastructure. In 2026, it attracted its first co-brand: a CNY cover with a prominent Hong Kong jewellery brand.
Cultural staple
Every CNY since launch, cover designs have spread organically across social. Users sharing packets with friends and communities.
The designs showed up everywhere. That kind of reach isn't designed for. It's earned.
Shipping under a hard deadline with a compliance constraint taught me to scope ruthlessly. The best decision I made wasn't a design decision, it was knowing what to cut and aligning the team around that early enough to actually ship.
I also learned that security and delight aren't opposites. I invested in the emotional moment, and users noticed. They shared their covers with friends and strangers every CNY, turning a security fix into a small piece of Hong Kong's digital culture.
What I'm most proud of is building the share system to be extensible from day one. Two years later, the team was still building on top of it – good infrastructure decisions compound quietly.
