One service that is unique to Hong Kong and other parts of Asia is that around the start of the lunar new year you can contact your local bank branch and reserve new bank notes for Chinese New Year. What does that exactly mean? Well, the New Year tradition is to give red packets or 'Lai See' with fresh, or new bank notes. These can be in any denomination from 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 dollar bills. There are typically two services that banks provide: (i) Newly issued bank notes, (ii) Cleaned and re-flattened notes, which make old notes look new (although I have not seen this come up this year).
This service is provided to people who issue red packets. The main demographic are those who are married. Married couples in Hong Kong can generally can issue anywhere between 30-100 red packets each year, depending on family size, social circle and closeness with colleagues. Recipients ranging from relatives, friends, colleagues and kids of all the above. Outside of family it is common to extend red packets to anybody who you might interact on a constant, reoccurring basis. This can include service people (eg: store owners, helpers, hairdressers, nannies, personal trainers, fitness studio concierges, etc). During graduate school I'd seen married students handing out red packets to other university students. As you can imagine the cost and number of individual notes can become quite large, hence the need to make reservations for the new notes.
For me, I generally reserve anywhere between 2500-3000 HKD worth of notes. 500 for the tea lady at work, my hairdresser also gets that amount. 200 for my apartment doormen and doorwomen, 100 for my Laundromat and then 20 for the miscellaneous interactions (office cleaners, gym cleaners etc).
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