Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China's e-commerce giant, on Friday set another sales record for Singles Day, the world's biggest online shopping event, reporting that about 120.7 billion yuan ($17.79 billion) was spent in 24 hours.

Alibaba, which created the annual shopping festival on November 11, 2009, said that this year's sales far exceeded last year's 92.1 billion yuan in transactions.

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba Group, said he was very satisfied with this year's sales.

"We hope November 11 is a festival that bring happiness to both shoppers and merchants and it can be a force that drives the improvement of the commerce infrastructure in China," he said.

Ma made his comments in Shenzhen where Alibaba held an event and invited 600 media from China and abroad to witness the real-time transactions of merchandize sold on its platforms.

Similar to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US and the UK, Singles Day has grown into the world's largest online shopping event with the participation of not only e-commerce players, but also brick-and-mortar retailers. Alibaba's sales volume accounts for a bulk of the total sales on Singles Day.

The event has become a celebration of consumption for urban residents and more and more for those who live in rural China.

The rising penetration rate of smartphones in China has fueled the growth in Singles Day. About 82 percent of this year's transactions were completed using mobile devices, a significant increase from 68.67 percent recorded last year, according to Alibaba.

The increasingly convenient internet consumer-finance services in China have helped more people to shrug off concerns about shopping as they can afford more purchases by borrowing small loans.

By 5 pm on Friday, about 21 percent of the Nov 11 shopping purchases were paid by Ant Check Later, an online consumer finance service provided by Ant Financial Services Group.