Spend too much on the US$25.3 billion Singles’ Day extravaganza? Now you can crowdsource your bill and get your friends to contribute
A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay during the 24 hour period on November 11
Singles worried they may have trouble paying for their “Double Eleven” online shopping festival purchases made on Saturday can rest easy – the e-commerce platforms that hosted the event and some Chinese peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders are offering alternative ways to pay the bill.
Alipay, the electronic payment arm owned by Alibaba Group, quietly introduced a new function on its credit loan product Huabei after the 168.2 billion yuan (US$25.3 billion) shopping gala ended at midnight Saturday, which allows users to send requests to their Alipay friends asking for contributions to help repay their shopping bill.
Huabei works as a virtual credit card within the Alipay app, enabling consumers to pay for online and offline purchases within a credit limit set by Alipay. Since late October, Alipay began raising the credit limit for almost 80 per cent of its users in a bid to encourage more spending during the full day shopping event. Average Huabei consumers could spend 2,200 yuan more this year after the temporary credit limit increase.
A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay during the 24 hour period on November 11, a company announcement said. Huabei is seen as the preferred option for consumers during shopping sprees like Singles’ Day because payments made through other means, like credit cards, can sometimes experience crashes due to online congestion.
Baitiao, JD.com’s credit loan product that allows deferred payment on purchases made on its own e-commerce platform, reportedly saw transactions surge 450 per cent year-on-year during the first hour of this year’s shopping event.