Black Friday spending: Bank’s top purchase made at Cartier for R780k

South Africans have complained about the cost of living and having to take drastic measures to stretch their salaries for the entire months, but this year’s Black Friday showed that not all South Africans are struggling.

FNB saw purchases of over R3.2 billion on this year’s black Friday, exceeding last year’s highest spending peak. One of the bank’s top purchases was made at Cartier Boutique for R780,000 a luxury store specialising in high jewellery, timepieces and accessories.

690 transactions per second

There were 20 million card transactions processed by FNB with a maximum of 690 transactions per second.

Senzo Nsibande, CEO of FNB Card said the uptick in transactional activity seen throughout December speaks to the improved economic landscape and sustained recovery in consumer income compared to previous years.

“This year we saw strong volumes and value spent over this time despite the slow start on Friday morning,” he added.

Popular spending categories

Nsibande added that the most popular spending categories were groceries, clothing, and entertainment. The most growth was seen in the travel category with 15.4% and clothing with 11.4% compared to last year.

Strong transactions continued throughout Saturday and Sunday. He is of the view that many customers took advantage of their payday preceding Black Friday this year, which gave customers some spending power with Black Friday deals continuing into the weekend event.

“However, an interesting trend observed this year is that spending moved to earlier in the week of Black Friday with an overall increase of 25% observed from Monday to Friday vs 7% for 2023.”

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Digital payments

The bank has noted a strong preference for digital payments. “Over Black Friday weekend, 18% of all in-store transactions were made via digital wallets, which increased by 43% year on year.”

For credit cards, 42% of customer spend was online, which has increased by 17% since last year.

“E-commerce saw a 37% increase in transaction values and a 76% increase in transaction volumes. Tourism (37%), Variety Goods (26%) and Apparel (24%) saw the strongest year-on-year growth on Black Friday.”

“Some of the leading merchants that drove some spending activity for retail customers on the day were Takealot, Checkers60 and Uber for online purchases while leading in-store purchases were made at Checkers, Shoprite and Spar.”

Other banks

Capitec saw 23 million of its clients spending R25.45 billion this Black Friday and Saturday, an increase of 27% compared to last year. 

The bank’s clients logged into the Capitec app 27 million times on Black Friday alone, an increase of 51% from last year, while cash withdrawals grew by 15% and card payments increased by 21%, with online card transactions increasing more than 38%.

Capitec clients spent R1.98 billion at major grocery retailers, equivalent to over 99 million loaves of bread. The largest single-card purchases were R287 535.82 at a grocery store, R245 590.38 for home improvements and hardware, and R53 980.69 at a clothing store.

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