Alibaba’s 24-hour annual sales event Singles’ Day recorded a spike in sales driven by mobile purchases and international brands.

The Chinese ecommerce giant posted a 39% spike in gross merchandise volume to $25.3bn (£19.3bn) and approximately 90% of these sales were made through mobile devices.

The retail giant’s payment division Alipay processed 1.48 billion payment transactions during the period, up 41% year-on-year and processed 256,000 transactions per second at peak.

Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang said: “More than $25bn of GMV in one day is not just a sales figure.

“It represents the aspiration for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully embraced the integration of online and offline retail.”

The retailer sold products from 60,000 international brands and merchants with items from Japan, the US, Australia, Germany and South Korea driving international sales to Chinese shoppers.

Alibaba also opened 60 pop-ups in shopping malls across China during the period to drive customer engagement, which employed technology including augmented or virtual reality-enabled shopping and facial recognition payment.

UK and Ireland managing director David Lloyd said: “Whether shopping in augmented and virtual reality, paying via facial recognition, or taking advantage of scan-and-deliver convenience, each innovation was designed with customer experience at its heart.

“With the help of Alibaba’s augmented-reality technology, for example, cosmetics giants L’Oréal has installed an interactive device at its Shanghai, Wuhan, and Changsha boutique shops and several pop-up stores.

“With it, visitors can ‘try on’ different types of makeup by simply looking into the screen and tapping on a selection of hues that appears at the bottom. Customers can see in the ‘magic mirror’ what they look like with a certain shade of lipstick or blush. They can play around with colors until they find the one that best suits them.

“Once they do, from the same touchscreen, they can immediately order from L’Oréal’s flagship store on Tmall, and the product will be delivered to their doorstep.”

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