During the shopping event of the year, the leisure and entertainment industry grew its share of online sales over the four-day Black Friday weekend by 113% from last year.
This was according to Peach Payments who tracked the spend of transactions in the country during Black Friday.
The company said there was growth in rand value of 38% overall processed via the payment service provider’s platform in the month of November compared to November 2023, and a 37% increase over just the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend compared to 2023.
Rahul Jain, the CEO and co-founder, said, “This is in line with the trend over the last few years of the whole of November being treated as Black Friday Month, with deals offered by merchants across the board. Despite the economic pressures, the sheer volume of online payments South Africa’s economy supports is impressive. Over the four-day weekend we processed more than 1.4 million transactions, to a total value of more than R1.19bn.”
The largest individual transaction Peach Payments processed over the weekend was for R441 000 in the Travel and Tourism industry.
Jain further said that while the vast majority of these transactions were completed through card payments, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payments processed by Peach Payments over the weekend grew by 198% in rand value from 2023.
ApplePay also showed a sharp increase of 4910% growth in rand value year-on-year.
ApplePay also showed a sharp increase of 4910% growth in rand value year-on-year, which he attributes to these payment methods becoming more important to consumers, and being easier for merchants to offer nowadays.
Popular Chinese e-commerce retailer, Temu, are one of many companies that make use of ApplePay for consumers to make purchases with ease from the devices.
“This Black Friday was a good day for the e-commerce industry as a whole, in a tough year, and we have surpassed expectations,” Jain said.
Peach Payments said for the first time, released data on its Mauritius operations for the Black Friday weekend, where total monetary value of sales processed saw an increase of 308% over 2023.
Individual transactions grew by a whopping 404%, albeit off a low base.
“We are excited to see the growth in what is still a nascent market for us. It shows the potential Mauritius has as a payments processing destination,” Jain said.
“In particular, we are pleased with the growth seen in the Travel and Tourism industry on the island,” he further added.
BankservAfrica said Black Friday 2024 delivered a day of exciting deals and shopping activity, performing well above a typical shopping day and marginally higher than the levels in 2023.
The BankservAfrica 3D-Secure online card authentication service showed the overall volumes were up by 27% compared to the previous day and 6% higher compared to Black Friday 2023.
Shoppers kicked off their Black Friday deal hunting at midnight with volumes up by 75% compared to the same time on Thursday, but 11% down from Black Friday 2023.
Activity ramped up from 6am, and by 10am, volumes were 79% higher than the same time on Thursday. Online activity peaked between 9am and 10am.
The online shopping frenzy continued throughout the day with merchants leveraging enticing deals to keep customers interested – and shopping.
“The rush to get the last-minute Black Friday deals was evident in our tracking,” BankServAfrica said.
BUSINESS REPORT