China's biggest annual online shopping festival, the Single's Day or Double Eleven, falls on Wednesday.
During the first 90 minutes of the shopping spree, nearly 32 billion yuan or some 5 billion U.S. dollars' worth of merchandise was settled via Alipay on Alibaba's Chinese and international retail marketplaces.
72% of the sales were settled via mobile platforms.
Alibaba also states it expects to see a peak of 120 thousand orders and 60 thousand payments per second.
On Monday evening, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called Alibaba chairman Jack Ma to wish him luck for today's Single's Day online sales event.
The premier expressed his congratulation and encouragement for Alibaba's achievement on Single's Day.
For the seventh year in a row, Alibaba will again mark Single's Day with online sales.
Global accounting firm KPMG on Tuesday predicted online sales on the Singles' Day in China will reach new high due to rising popularity of online shopping among Chinese consumers.
Widely recognized as the anti-Valentine's day, Nov. 11 has become the country's biggest annual commercial holiday.
For the last Singles' Day sales, Alibaba raked in 57.1 billion yuan.
Express delivery services like EMS, S.F. Express, Zhongtong and Yuantong have made necessary preparations for the hike of deliveries.
It is expected that China's rapidly-expanding express delivery services will move 20 billion packages this year.
China's State Post Bureau urges courier firms to upgrade services, and expand services into far reaching areas.
