Alibaba said that five minutes after midnight Alipay was processing 256,000 payment transactions per second, doubling last year's high-water mark. "At 12:07:23 am, the number of payment transactions processed by Alipay surpassed 100 million, equivalent to the total number of payment transactions processed during 2012," Alibaba said. Alibaba seized on Double 11 as China's online answer to the late-November US "Black Friday" shopping rush. It found a sweet spot combining China's burgeoning spending power, the Chinese love of a good bargain, and the growing national addiction to one-click smartphone payments. But environmentalists complain of ecological harm, accusing Alibaba and other e-commerce companies of fuelling a culture of excessive over-consumption and mountains of waste.

Source: The Nation Bangkok November 11, 2017 03:22 UTC