Thread by @patio11

There’s a really interesting UX in PayPay that they trialed recently to get people to increase engagement.

It’s similar to a lootbox, except themed for a non-gamer audience using a familiar device in Japan. (くじ, analogous to a raffle lottery if you’re familiar with those.)

You were awarded tickets for various actions during a qualification period. Receive money from someone, 2.0 tickets. Open campaign page and click a button, 1 ticket (offered daily, presumably to get people to anticipate the later redemption period and get over toothbrush test).

Then after qualification period you had 2 weeks to redeem tickets, in a very lootbox/gotcha adjacent animated experience where you could e.g. redeem 10 at a time.

Value in expectation per ticket appears to be a bit higher than 1 JPY.

Given a) breakage and b) gamification I wonder if this isn’t more effective at driving user behavior than the traditional (in Japanese web services) “just pay them to do the thing you want them to do.”

An example of the “challenge” (quests) UI:

(The red ones I did not get into during the qualification period; the green ones I did or had already done. First one is “link a bank account”, a huge margin driver for them.)

And here we have the results screen with a prominent “share it on social media” CTA, because of course they want me to brag about my 220 yen of cash back to all my friends so that they also open PayPay accounts.

I think this is… interesting? PayPay keeps trying to change customer expectations from “Use our payment method and get 1% cash back” to “We have a fun game on your phone which involves shopping, and when you win it you get cash money.”

Even knowing how this works and knowing that the value in expectation is about 50 yen I’m having trouble restraining myself from telling my wife “Hey honey remember to open PayPay to redeem your tickets!”