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Alipay's one-year online product hits quota in 3 minutes
支付宝5.8亿理财产品3分钟售罄
A 580 Million yuan quota, reached in just three minutes. Last Friday, Alipay launched its one-year online wealth management product, with an expected annual return of seven percent.
"The popularity has far exceeded our expectations. Our quota was reached within minutes. Whether you got it depended entirely on your internet speed and how fast you clicked your mouse," said Zhang Daosheng, Alipay internet tchnologies.
China’s e-finance market began heating up in June last year, when Alipay launched the country’s first online asset management product Yu’E Bao.
The high demand immediately attracted other domestic internet giants, including Tencent and Baidu.
"These types of products have energized China’s e-finance market. The market volume now grows by 10 billion yuan every day," said Luo Mingxiong, vice president of Software and Internet Services Exchange.
The staggering popularity of wealth management products is derived from very real advantages.
No investment threshold, real-time earnings, no fixed investment period and a much higher annualized return compared to current deposit interests.
"This is a product that attracts small retail investors. The per-account investment is only four thousand yuan. And the product has attracted a younger crowd. A quarter of Yu’E Bao clients are college students," said Liu Jiazhang, senior strategic analyst at Tianhong Asset Management.
In spite of their high popularity, online investment products pose certain safety concerns.
People are worried that their accounts can be accessed if they lose their phones, as major e-commerce providers all have mobile apps. But experts say the real threat lies elsewhere.
"According to our monitoring system, 99 percent of account losses come from Trojans or viruses," said Zhang.
Meanwhile, providers such as Alibaba and Tencent have also launched their own insurance policies, to fully cover losses if their clients’ accounts get hacked.
