Alibaba helps make China's largest fund

Photo shows a trade-show booth of Tianhong Asset Management Co displayed on Nov 1, 2013 at the 9th Beijing International Finance Expo in Beijing.[Photo / dfic.cn]

BEIJING -- Currency fund Tianhong Zenglibao has become the first fund in China to hit 100 billion yuan ($16.30 billion) of sales thanks to its cooperation with Yu'ebao, Alibaba's wealth management product.

The fund, with more than 29 million buyers so far, saw its asset scale sales exceed 100 billion yuan on Thursday, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Friday, citing data from Tianhong Fund.

Alipay, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, announced in June it would offer its users the option to directly invest with the private Tianhong Fund using spare cash from Alipay accounts. The business is called Yu'ebao.

The past five months have seen this fund blossom, owing to the prosperous Internet e-commerce platform, and the Singles Day shopping spree on November 11 had helped Yu'ebao.

In the process of a deal on Taobao, once the buyer pays for the order, his or her money is first accepted by Alipay, then after he or she receives the goods, a final confirmation is made and Alipay then gives the money to the seller. If a buyer forgets to confirm payment, the money is transferred into the seller's account after 10 days by the system.

The Singles Day had a total volume of 35 billion yuan ($5.75 billion) and thus a large amount of money passed through Alipay's account. Analysts estimated that Alipay may have also bought the fund using the extra income, which powerfully enlarged the scale of Yu'ebao.

Insiders of the fund market pointed out that the large scale of increase was due to Alibaba's statement that Yu'ebao was the only partner of Alipay in the sales of monetary funds, after Alibaba began to share the hold of Celestica fund in October.

Profit purchasing investors tend to choose safe financial management tools. The relatively stable yields of Yu'ebao is favored by most customers, the report said.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba allows consumers to invest their spare cash in the money market funds through its Alipay online payment service. The product, called Yu'ebao, or "Leftover Treasure," has netted 130 billion yuan so far, making the fund's management firm, Tianhong Fund, the country's largest fund management company.

The asset scale of Yu'ebao fund exceeded 100 billion yuan by November 14, 2013, with the number of holders amounting to 30 million, Securities Times reported on Friday.

Meanwhile, due to the cooperation with Alipay, the management scale of Tianhong monetary fund has doubled from 55.653 billion yuan at the end of September to over 100 billion yuan.

During Singles Day, the frequency of payment of Alipay and Yu'ebao exceeded 188 million and 16.79 million with total transaction volume at 35 billion yuan and 6 billion yuan.