Travel, toilet paper sales soar in Black Friday rush

CONSUMERS nationwide flooded thousands of stores to take advantage of the price drop on Black Friday, November 25.

The Black Friday concept originated in the US and refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is usually when businesses drop their prices in an attempt to attract consumers.

According to Payfast’s live tracker, the largest single basket value spent on Friday by one online shopper across its merchant ecosystem (at the time of publication) was R284 625 – spent between 4am and 5am.

Payfast is a payment gateway that enables online payments for over 40 000 active merchants including Takealot, Superbalist and Dinnerbox.

On Black Friday, FNB customers spent over R3 billion, the highest recorded figure for the bank in the past four years.

Chris Labuschagne, CEO of FNB Card said: “In a market where consumers are seeing an increase in the cost of living, many are always likely to take advantage of Black Friday deals. As anticipated, the most popular spending categories included travel and transportation, groceries, clothing, and entertainment – experiencing a robust recovery.

“The increase in travel is especially encouraging given that many consumers were unable to travel in the past few years due to global travel limitations, and it augurs well for the South African economy as the festive season approaches.”

Although Black Friday is about taking advantage of discounts and deals, FNB advises consumers not to overspend and instead make use of their ebucks service, which will help with areas such as groceries, fuel and travel.

Ashley Saffy, head of business development at FNB Card, noted that customers were increasingly choosing safer and more convenient payment methods, such as using their virtual cards for online spending and doing contactless card and device transactions for in-store purchases.

“The value of online (card-notpresent) spend increased by 31% compared to the same period last year, while in-store (card-present) spend increased by 18%. It’s also encouraging to see that contactless payments increased by 36% compared to last year’s Black Friday, demonstrating that customers are becoming more aware of convenient and safer payment methods, whether they shop in-store or online,” she added.

Glenwood Superspar general manager Vanessa Naidoo said Black Friday was a success. “We had approximately one million (product) sales and had over 11 000 customers that entered our stores on that Friday.

“We did well with our sales and exceeded our target. The most sold item was Baby Soft toilet paper.”