China’s Alipay just saw a record 1 billion transactions in a day

By Steven Millward for TechInAsia

China’s biggest shopping day last Friday saw not only an all-time high in spending on Alibaba’s online marketplaces but also a record amount transacted by users of its mobile wallet app, Alipay.

Using Alipay for a wide range of Chinese shopping sites, apps, and also in-store cashless payments, the Singles Day shopping spree on November 11 saw 1.05 billion transactions go through the app, up 48 percent on the same day last year.

Apple Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay among the payment options at a supermarket in China.

At its peak, 120,000 transactions per second inundated the wallet app, according to data from Alibaba spin-off company Ant Financial which runs Alipay.

The strong numbers are a boost to Alipay, China’s top mobile wallet app with over 450 million active users, as it faces growing competition in online and offline payments from WeChat, the popular messaging app run by arch-rival tech giant Tencent, and from Apple Pay.

First appeared at TIA