Alibaba 11.11 Sales Hit US$18.21 Bln At 1.10pm

SHANGHAI, Nov 11 (Bernama) -- The Alibaba 11.11 Global Shopping Festival 2017 hits RMB120.71 billion (US$18.21 billion) in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) through Alipay as at 1.10pm local time (the same as Malaysia) on Saturday. The group announced that this surpassed its 2016 GMV which was recorded at RMB120.7 billion (US$17.8 billion). The 24-hour online shopping event dubbed the Singles’ Day, which kicked off at 12am on Saturday, set a new world record as 256,000 payment transactions were processed per second, representing a year-on-year growth of 101 per cent, after it went on for five minutes and 22 seconds. This was against 175,000 payment transactions processed per second last year.  The 11.11 is more than 18 times the size of Amazon Prime Day and 2.5 times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday events combined. Since its launch in 2009, the Single’s Day has become the largest and the most anticipated online and mobile shopping festival in the world. -- BERNAMA