Rush overwhelms voucher system

About 2.8 million people have registered online for electronic consumption vouchers as a government official said an influx of new registrations through the iAM Smart mobile app overwhelmed the system on the first day of registration.

People have rushed to register since Sunday because they want to capitalize on the rewards from the four electronic platforms. One of them is WeChat Pay HK, which offers discounts worth HK$10,000 for every user and daily lucky draws that offer up to a HK$5,000 voucher bonus.

By yesterday, 2.79 million people had registered for the HK$5,000 Consumption Voucher Scheme via electronic registration.

Jessie Wong Hok-ling, the head of the budget and tax policy unit at the financial secretary's office, said that nearly 2.38 million people had registered by yesterday morning.

More than two million people who registered for last year's HK$10,000 Cash Payout Scheme were able to register without queuing up online, as their identities were authenticated after answering two security questions.

With electronic registration, people can register on the website either using the "iAM Smart" mobile app for authentication or without using the app.

As Sunday was the first day of registration, Wong said the iAM Smart mobile app's system was busy that morning and that the registering and identity authentication process was at one point obstructed.She said there was a "traffic jam" during the registration process, as many people who registered through iAM Smart did not have an account and had to open one on the spot.

There were nearly 40,000 new users for the mobile app on Sunday, which Wong said was 10 times more than usual. She added that the government is studying how to improve the registration system and reminded the public that there's no need to rush to register.