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Alibaba Settles $5bn on Alipay in First 90 Minutes of ‘Singles Day’
Nov 11, 2015 9:53 AM
By Rapaport News
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RAPAPORT... Five billion dollars were settled through third-party online
payment platform Alipay in the first hour and a half of the ‘Singles Day,’ an
annual Chinese festival for bachelors, Alibaba Group said in a statement.
Sales to the tune of $3.9 billion were recorded in the first
hour from midnight on November 11, of which $2.9 billion, or 74 percent, was
through transactions made on mobile phones. This compared with 46 percent in
the first hour of last year’s 24-hour festival.
This year, $1 billion was settled in the first eight minutes
and $2 billion within 17 minutes and 29 seconds. It took only 31 minutes to
break the 2012 figure of $3.1 billion for the entire day, also known as 11.11.
Separately, almost 130 million users visited Alibaba’s
Taobao mobile-phone shopping application in the hours leading up to midnight
this year, exceeding the peak volume during the 2014 event, Alibaba added in a
statement.
Singles Day takes place on November 11 each year because the
date in numbers has four “ones” in a row. It has become a key day in the retail
calendar, similar to Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the U.S.
“At each 11.11, Alibaba’s infrastructure is put to the test
and our technological capabilities are taken to the next level,” Alibaba Group’s
chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said in a statement. “Last year, we
handled a record-breaking 80,000 orders at peak per second. This year, we
expect to handle 120,000 orders and 60,000 payments at peak per second. It will
be a proud achievement for us."
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Tags:
alibaba, Alibaba Group, apps, China, online sales, Rapaport News, retail
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