Yu'E Bao deposits exceed $65.96 billion

Yu'E Bao, an investment service offered by Alipay, China's leading online payments provider, and Tian Hong Asset Management, has attracted aggregate deposits of more than 400 billion yuan ($65.96 billion), media reports said on Tuesday.

The deposits of Yu'E Bao, which means leftover treasure in Chinese, skyrocketed to more than 400 billion yuan on Feb 14, a month after it reported 250 billion yuan of assets under management on Jan 15, said Shanghai Securities News.

It is reported that the size of Yu'E Bao is even bigger than the size of the bonds issued on behalf of local governments in 2013, which amount to 350 billion yuan.

The so called grassroots wealth management product, which is designed to make it easy for Alipay users to invest their idle cash in their Alipay accounts and get a higher interest rate than typical bank savings deposits, is the first of its kind to combine the convenience of the Internet with the sophistication of finance.

Despite its giant size, the growth of Yu'E Bao shows no signs of slowing in terms of attracting deposits from users. Its first fixed-term wealth management product, which requires users to deposit their money for an entire year, sold out within six minutes when it was launched on Friday.

A total of 880 million yuan worth of wealth management products were sold on that day. The product's annual yield is expected to reach 7 percent.