The blood spilled on Singles Day (aka Double 11) by “hand-choppers”—Chinese slang for shopaholics—has long dried. But for many happy shoppers, especially millennials, now is the time to calculate their debts. The record-breaking figures from the top festival of consumerism owe much to the rise of easy consumer credit offered by China’s burgeoning fintech industry, including microfinancing and P2P lending companies such as PPDai, Qudian, and JD’s Baitiao.

One of most notable online lending players aptly named Huabei (花呗, Just Spend) comes from the company that invented Singles Day—Alibaba. The clever tactic helps Alibaba, or the Alipay platform to be more precise, finance the spending spree on its own e-commerce platform.

To help them give away money to uncle Jack Ma, as hand-choppers have joked, this year Huabei has raised its credit limit to almost 80 percent during the promotion activities before Singles Day, allowing users to spend an extra RMB 2200 on average. The service also made a cringe-worthy move that made many reevaluate their friend’s list: it introduced a function through which users can solicit their Alipay friends for contributions to help repay their shopping debt.

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