HONG KONG, May 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On 23 May 2022, in response to recent emerging trends, Hang Seng Indexes Company launched the Hang Seng China Metaverse Index to track the performance of Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong-listed companies which has businesses related to the development of the metaverse. The index is aimed at helping investors capture innovative and transformative thematic investment opportunities that may emerge in the Mainland and Hong Kong stock markets. Yeahka continues to explore the metaverse to empower its commercial digitalized ecosystem and is selected as one of the 30 constituents, among other major constituents such as Tencent, NetEase, and Kuaishou.
According to public information, Yeahka had previously launched a coupon cloud platform based on blockchain technology and was included in the fourth batch of national domestic blockchain information services in October 2020. The platform provides merchant solutions for store management, customer acquisition, and traffic attraction, with the blockchain technology-driven advantage of being a tamper-proof traffic attraction mechanism, allowing transparency in customer acquisition paths. In October 2021, Yeahka formally ventured into the metaverse through Yeahka Gaming, empowering the company's ecosystem with metaverse games and exploring the integration of virtual and reality.
The metaverse incorporates a series of cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI). Users are exposed to a deeper degree of Internet virtualization and a stronger sense of experience and novelty: the communication and interaction in the virtual Internet world of the metaverse closely approximate the real world, and whatever obtained within the metaverse can also be recognized in the real world, blurring the boundaries between online and offline. The development and popularity of Web 3.0 would also support the open and decentralized nature of the metaverse.
Compared with the "read-only" model of Web 1.0 and the model of user-led production and sharing of contents in Web 2.0, the public's vision of Web 3.0 is of a brand-new Internet world that is relatively decentralized, automated, and intelligent. On the premise that personal digital identities, digital assets, and data are completely personal for users, users can truly own their data. Therefore, Web 3.0 is considered to have tremendous potential in the future integration of online and offline, and metaverse is a virtual formation that can thrive under Web 3.0.
As a payment-based technology platform, Yeahka has gradually expanded its business from one-stop payment services to merchant solutions and in-store e-commerce services over a period of 10+ years. It has served 7.5 million offline small and medium-sized merchants and reached over 900 million consumers. After the Pandemic, small and medium-sized offline merchants gradually realized the value of digitalization of their operations, and Yeahka has strategically seized this opportunity, launching QR Code ordering, integrated takeaway, and in-store e-commerce services under the "social + recommendation + selective" model, to solve merchants' pain points with smart operations, helping them to revitalize consumers and attract customers.
On the consumer end, Yeahka enables the promotion of merchant brands through private domain and social recommendation marketing, promoting merchants' local lifestyle packages and inspiring consumers' desire to consume in-store. The interaction between merchants and consumers is not restricted to the real world, the combination of the virtual and the real world allows for more diversified interactions between merchants and consumers.
Yeahka believes that, with the rapid development of Web 3.0, the combination of the virtual and the real world is a perfect area for Yeahka to involve in. Its social recommendation properties and the interactive nature between the virtual and the reality can empower the business ecosystem of Yeahka, adding more possibilities for the in-store e-commerce business and merchant solutions.
Based on this, Yeahka Gaming launched the Year of the Tiger AR game during the Chinese New Year of the Tiger, and the game eventually had an exposure of more than 40 million times in the WeChat ecosystem, and the daily average WeChat index of related keywords was over 10,000, with the peak value exceeding 50,000. The community feedback on the game was also positive with the participation rate through sharing reaching over 26.6%, and the new customer acquisition rate through sharing was 50.1%.
This further proves that the path of empowering merchants and consumers through the metaverse is viable and that Yeahka will continue to explore how to use "meta-universe + Web 3.0" to empower its business ecosystem.
It is said that Yeahka will next launch a 3D store operation simulation game for consumers, in which players can build their own islands and operate stores related to real merchants on the islands; players can also visit each other and interact with businesses on the islands, breaking the barriers between the virtual and the reality through in-store incentives to achieve social media recommendation marketing and traffic attraction for the in-store e-commerce business of Yeahka.
