Alibaba smashes Singles Day record as shopping spree hits $25b

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China’s 24-hour orgy of online shopping has ended on a climactic high. Singles Day shoppers spent a record US$25.3 billion, eclipsing last year’s US$17.7 billion tally.

The figure is for Alibaba’s two marketplaces, which dominate China’s booming ecommerce industry. JD, Alibaba’s closest rival, saw US$19.1 billion spent during its sales event, which ran from November 1 to 11, up 50 percent from last year’s.

A record high 90 percent of spending was done on phones and tablets, said an Alibaba spokesperson. Last year it was 82 percent, and 69 percent in 2015.

Alipay, Alibaba’s mobile wallet app, processed around 256,000 payment transactions per second at its peak within the first 10 minutes of the shopping festival. A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay in the entire 24 hours.

A large screen at Alibaba’s event shows the final tally. Photo credit: Alibaba.

China’s online shoppers are set to spend around US$1.2 trillion during the course of this year, up from 2016’s US$911 billion, according to data from Emarketer.

Still room to grow

While consumers showed increasing enthusiasm for the day of discounts across China’s ecommerce sites, not everyone is a fan of the annual Singles Day phenomenon, which first started in 2009.

“Singles Day is a disaster for the environment. Alibaba isn’t doing nearly enough,” said Greenpeace East Asia toxics campaigner Nie Li to Agence France Presse.

Greenpeace estimates the 24-hour shopfest last year generated 130,000 tonnes of packaging waste – less than 10 percent of which was recycled.

China’s Singles Day surpassed the US’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday in scale back in 2012:

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