Viral Chinese app lets strangers vote on purchases to stop impulse buying

Ahead of China’s Double 11 shopping spree, a viral WeChat mini-programme called “Wallet, Please Wait” is helping consumers curb impulse purchases.

The free tool borrows from corporate finance workflows, outsourcing approval of everyday purchases to the crowd.

Users can submit purchase requests detailing the item, its price, their reasons for wanting it and any cheaper alternatives.

Shoppers can share requests with family members or post them to a public “plaza,” where purchases are approved or rejected once a voting threshold is reached. Voters must explain their decisions.

In one case, strangers approved a 60-yuan (US$9) barbecue dinner for an unemployed user living off savings. One voter urged them not to be too hard on themselves when life was already tough.

Other requests have sparked sharper divisions. A 15,000-yuan (US$2,240) ticket for a new iPhone, for example, ended in a six-to-six deadlock between those who supported upgrading essential tech and those who favoured a cheaper screen repair.

Meanwhile, practical safety purchases – such as a 40-yuan carbon monoxide detector for elderly relatives in a rural area – have been approved within minutes, with voters praising them as “inexpensive and vital.”

Despite its simple mechanics, the mini-programme quickly captured public attention.

According to China Business News Media, it surpassed 10,000 users within nine hours of launch. It went on to attract more than 300,000 participants and generate roughly 370,000 purchase requests.

The tool was built in just eight days by an AI-assisted Shanghai product manager who goes by the pseudonym “Huoshan.”

After the project went viral, its development was taken over by the R&D team at Huoshan’s company.

Huoshan told the media that the project grew out of his own experience with impulse spending: he often bought non-essential items only to regret it immediately.

Some users say the platform’s main strength is that it avoids the social politeness common among people who know one another.

Friends and family may hesitate to criticise, or simply have different financial standards. Anonymous peers, by contrast, have no emotional baggage and can offer more candid feedback.

Xiaoxin, a Shenzhen-based user, told the SCMP that simply filling out a request creates a pause that can curb the initial urge to buy.

Beyond budgeting, the tool has also become an unlikely space for lighthearted, anonymous connections.

Comment sections often mix practical advice with playful teasing. One user jokingly rejected a request for a meal, writing: “Denied. If I can’t have it, nobody gets it.”

In another thread about a Nintendo game card, fellow players offered candid reviews of the game.

Li Chunling, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Dazhong News that the mini-programme reflects a growing “new frugality” among Gen Z consumers, who are cutting non-essentials to spend more deliberately on what matters.

Still, some observers caution that crowd-sourced votes should remain advisory, warning that too much reliance on outside approval could weaken people’s confidence in their own decisions.

The tool’s rise coincides with China’s Double 11 festival, an annual shopping event launched by Taobao in 2009 that generated 1.6 trillion yuan (US$239 billion) in online gross merchandise value last year. Taobao is operated by Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.