Even though it was predicted, we have been blown away at how successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday were this year. Black Friday alone broke records all around, demonstrating the enthusiasm of South Africans to find the best online shopping deals ahead of the festive season.
In the lead up to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, we put a number of preparations in place to ensure that PayFast could handle the increased load on our payment engine and that our customer service team had more capacity to answer tickets. And we are happy to say that everything we did was worth it because we processed a record number of transactions without any major issues.
Unsurprisingly, online shoppers wanted to purchase the best Black Friday deals as early as possible, so they started making online purchases just after midnight. Transactions then started to taper, but reached their peak between 9am and 10am before gradually plateauing, as shown in the graph below.
On Black Friday, PayFast processed a whopping 502.15% total payment volume and saw a 292.01% increase in the number of transactions processed, compared to a normal busy day following payday*. We also recorded a year-on-year increase of 61.91% in total payment volume, and 78.05% in the number of transactions processed from Monday preceding Black Friday to Tuesday after Cyber Monday.
On average, online shoppers spent more per basket at R1,356.87 compared to a normal average basket value of R909.41**. It’s also worth noting that on Black Friday, we recorded that 37% of all transactions were made using Instant EFT, demonstrating its growing popularity as an online payment method.
True to the growing penetration of mobile device usage in South Africa, the majority of online shoppers who paid with PayFast were using their mobile device, followed by desktop and tablet, as shown below.
At PayFast, we pride ourselves in offering a robust online payment solution to all of our merchants and their customers. We hope that we helped you achieve a successful and profitable Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. Based on our experience over the past few years, we are excited for what 2020 has in store for all of us.
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* Based on average volumes processed on Mondays following payday in 2019, preceding Back Friday.
** Based on average basket value from 1 January 2019.
