FNB customers exceeded last year’s highest spend peak, going over R3,2-billion in Black Friday purchases this year.
Black Friday spending has increased by 11% year-on-year with transactions worth over R5,4-billion processed on FNB Speedpoint devices. Overall, 20-million card transactions were processed by FNB with a maximum of 690 transactions per second. The bank continued to see an upward shift in the FNB Virtual Card usage, with a 59% year on year increase in customer spend on Black Friday.
With the strong transactional start seen on Black Friday, strong continued growth was seen over Saturday and Sunday. 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 spend moved to earlier in the week of Black Friday with an overall increase of 25% observed from Monday to Friday vs 7% for 2023.
Senzo Nsibande, CEO of FNB Card, says: “The uptick in transactional activity seen throughout the month affirms 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.
“As expected, the most popular spend categories, included 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.”
Nsibande notes: “In line with the anticipated significant shift towards digital payments, we’ve seen a strong preference for safer and more convenient payments, with virtual card, online spend and digital wallets spend increasing significantly to prior year. Over Black Friday weekend, 18% of all instore transactions were made via digital wallets, which increased by 43% year on year. Online spend also performed well this weekend, with 23% of all spend online. For credit card specifically, 42% of customer spend was online, which has increased by 17% since the prior year. Interestingly, one of our top transactions recorded on Black Friday was for a purchase made at Cartier Boutique, for R780 000.
“E-commerce saw a 37% increase in transaction values and 76% increase in transaction volumes, while Brick & Mortar transactions saw a 10% increase in values and 19% in volumes. Tourism (37%), Variety Goods (26%) and Apparel (24%) saw the strongest year-on-year growth on Black Friday,” adds Nsibande.
Some of the leading merchants that drove some spend 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. In addition, on the promotional side, FNB Connect also ran a one-day promotion (186 units of each device at R186 per month) at Black Friday midnight to celebrate the bank’s 186th birthday and saw the PlayStation 5 and the Samsung 65” QLED Smart TV sell out in 20 minutes and 40 minutes respectively.
Following Black Friday weekend and to usher in the holiday spend season, FNB urges its customers to continue using their Virtual Cards for safer online transactions and to approve online purchases through the FNB App to avoid fraud over this time.