- New data from South Africa-based payment processor Ecentric shows that Black Friday spend increased significantly compared to last year.
- Black Friday 2024 saw 112 percent increase in customer spend compared to 2023.
- On Black Friday itself, transactions reached 2 185 every minute, with the most being 133 per second.
Another Black Friday is in the bag as South Africans head into the hectic holiday period and then the new year, but how did 2024 compare to previous years when it comes to shopper spending during the massive sometimes month-long sales this November?
According to Ecentric Payments Systems, which processes a large chunk of the country’s total card payments, South Africans spent more in 2024 Black Friday than in 2023.
“Despite coming off the back of a prolonged period of economic headwinds and difficult conditions, South African consumers bounced back during this year’s Black Friday week, clocking up massive year-on-year increases in spend on every day of the week, peaking at a 112% increase on the Tuesday,” Ecentric explains in a statement sent to Hypertext.
Adding that the lowest sales increase it saw was on Cyber Monday, typically the Monday after the Black Friday weekend. Here, the payment processor says it saw “a 32% year-on-year growth on Cyber Monday, according to data from the Ecentric Black Friday Dashboard, a real-time tracking tool belonging to Ecentric Payment Systems.”
Ecentric says it tracks transaction volumes both in-store and online, transaction values, including the average basket size, and trends and changes in metrics in real-time.
The average basket value, across all retailers in South Africa for this year’s Black Friday started at just under R450 and increased to under R500 by the end of the week, it says.
Of course, Black Friday itself had the highest volume of transactions, averaging a whopping 2 185 transactions a minute, with the highest per-second volume of transactions hitting 133. This means in one second, 133 transactions were processed.
Sunday had the lowest volume of transactions but still averaged 1 063 every minute.
“Even despite concern in some sectors, household consumption, which is often seen as a pillar of the economy, only grew by 0.5%. Seen against this reality, measuring actual real-time Black Friday retail activity paints a more optimistic picture heading into the festive period,” explains Ecentric’s Executive for Sales and Marketing, Rory Bosman.
“In spite of relatively flat economic conditions this year, consumers are evidently planning their bigger purchases around the special discounts they can find during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, which as we all know, has now expanded to a week-long event rather than just a single day.”
Ecentric found a key insight that more South Africans seemingly looked to spend online during Black Friday than in traditional retail.
“There’s been a marked increase in online purchases versus in-store, especially for big ticket items. The data suggests that people go into physical stores to look for what they want, and to make sure it is the right product, and then they are quite happy to make the actual purchase online based on where they get the best price,” says Bosman.
“The main take-home message, which is good for retailers, is that there has been a significant increase in transaction volumes year-over-year. Because the average basket value increased over the course of the week, we can deduce that consumers are shopping around to find the best deals before making their purchases.”
Black Friday continues to be an important date in the shopping calendar of South Africa.
[Image – Provided]
