While Black Friday has evolved into Black November, sales for the annual event kick off in earnest today, which means many South Africans will be trawling the internet looking for deals.

If you, like us, would prefer to watch the action unfold instead of take part, PayFast has once again created a tracker dashboard to see the most notable transactions for Black Friday locally, as well as find out how much money will be spent by consumers.

At the time of writing, some of the noteworthy figures include the top transaction so far, which totals R101 725 for a single basket.

As the most critical information for the tracker dashboard is anonymised, it is unclear what the item was, but seeing as how rare bottles of whisky can retail for upwards of R100k, it would not surprise us if that were the item in question.

Last year, the biggest single basket purchase was R299k, so it will be interesting to see if consumers are willing to surpass that given the strain that the pandemic has put on most.

Some of the other key figures being shared by PayFast on the dashboard include the average basket value, which currently sits at R1 312. Last year the average was R1 243, so we could see this year’s figure fall as more people get involved with sales.

Some of the other interesting metrics is which financial institutions and types of devices consumers are transacting via. For banks, Capitec is leading the way by some margin, followed by FNB and Standard Bank, although how much people are spending has not been disclosed.

As for what people are using to facilitate transactions, mobile is king at the moment, accounting for 67 percent of devices, while desktop takes up the rest at 33 percent.

With PayFast also planning to have a dashboard available for Cyber Monday next week, it will be interesting to see how spending habits have changed now that ecommerce is a crucial part of life during the pandemic.