User consumption behavior data verification shows that $1.99, $4.99 and $19.99 are the top three preferred denominations globally. According to the 2023 Bigo Live financial report, orders in this range account for 68% of the platform’s total revenue. Among them, the single transaction frequency of $4.99 is the highest (an average of 12 million times per month). As this denomination is compatible with 58% of the gift price range in live-streaming rooms (for example, a virtual rose requires 2 diamonds ≈0.1 US dollars), it achieves the lowest payment friction coefficient of 0.3. Referring to the behavioral analysis of Sensor Tower, the conversion rate of users choosing the small-denomination recharge Bigo of $1.99 is 3.5 times that of $10. It mainly attracts new users aged 18-24 (accounting for 75%), driving the monthly active growth rate to reach 15%. The $19.99 denomination has raised the single ARPU value to $23 due to triggering the “full gift mechanism” (a 5% diamond gift for recharging), and the repurchase period has been shortened to 7 days.
The cost structure of the payment channel affects the face value design. The credit card handling fee model (fixed at $0.3 + rate 2.9%) leads to a net loss rate of 12% for the $1.99 order platform. However, overall profitability is achieved through the cross-selling strategy (pushing a $4.99 upgrade package with a conversion rate of 33%). The rate of the bank transfer channel is only 0.5%, but 30% of users give up payment due to a 3-hour delay. Therefore, the platform’s incentive strategy is: a 3% refund for orders over $19.99 using the bank channel recharge Bigo, resulting in a 45% year-on-year increase in orders of this denomination. When the exchange rate fluctuates by ±6% (standard deviation 1.8) in 2024, the platform will automatically and dynamically adjust the high denomination prices. For instance, the price of the $99.99 package will fluctuate by ±0.5 US dollars to ensure that the settlement profit margin for merchants remains at 65%.
Regional pricing strategies reflect differences in economic levels. Japanese users prefer the $100 denomination (with a median transaction value of $92), while the top three denominations in the Indonesian market are $0.99/2.99/5.99, which is in line with the local per capita disposable income ratio of 0.15%. The user stratification model shows that whale users with an annual consumption of over $5,000 prefer the $200 denomination (accounting for 82% of their total recharge frequency), and this group contributes 38% of the platform’s transaction volume. In the Philippine market, driven by the host family system, the recharge density of the $200 denomination reaches 2.3 times per month, which is 170% higher than the global average. In actual cases, the top Japanese live-streamer “Yukiyuka” achieved a monthly income of over 13 million US dollars by recharging Bigo’s $100 denomination through fan targeting.
The risk control rules set a denomination threshold limit. The upper limit for new users’ first-day recharge is 50 US dollars (with a trigger probability of 98%), and the anti-money laundering system enables facial verification for orders over 100 US dollars (with an interception anomaly rate of 0.7%). Historical cases show that in the “diamond money laundering case” cracked in Singapore in 2023, criminals used high-frequency recharges of 1 US dollar (with an average of 500 operations per account per day) to evade monitoring, prompting the platform to upgrade its rules: The frequency of small recharges within $10 without verification has been reduced to 10 times per day, while recharge bigo requires double biometric identification when choosing the $100 denomination, and the fraud rate has decreased by 85%. The compliance framework requires that single transactions exceeding $200 be reported to the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), with a median execution delay of only 0.8 seconds.