Online retail in South Africa is no longer a peripheral activity; it is a structural force in the economy. The market is on track to surpass R130-billion this year, approaching 10% of total retail sales.
By Joshua Shimkin, head of growth and marketing at Peach Payments
With a growth rate of over 35% in 2024, online retail is far outpacing the sluggish growth of physical retail. For Black Friday 2025, this means retailers have to claim their piece of a market that is expanding ten times faster than physical retail. To handle this surge, there are some basics retailers need to know.
- Your payment partners must have a proven track record. Ask about real-world stats, like historical uptimes around 99% and historical processing of more than ten million monthly transactions. Also check if your payment gateway has built-in banking redundancy to keep processing transactions if a bank’s card payment system fails, which is more likely to occur on Black Friday.
- A fast, clean, and frictionless checkout is no longer a luxury – it’s a necessity. The biggest barrier to capturing the Black Friday opportunity is no longer credit card failure, but cart abandonment. The main drivers of cart abandonment have shifted from payment security to user experience. The top reasons for cart abandonment are a long or complicated checkout process (37,3%) and shipping fees (31,3%). The checkout experience is the main battleground. Make sure your payment partner has extensive plugins and integrations built in to provide a seamless, one-page checkout that keeps customers moving from cart to conversion.
- Global giants compete on price and scale, but local businesses can win on reliability, security, and a local experience. The rise of international platforms has been a hot topic, but local retailers are profitable and confident. A combined 92% of retailers expressed satisfaction or strong satisfaction with their current payment gateways. This trust is South African businesses’s superpower. Make sure your ecommerce site has industry-leading risk management, fraud detection, and tokenisation that builds consumer confidence. Also offer a wide array of local payment options like Payflex, Capitec Pay, and Scan to Pay, to give your customers the security and familiarity they trust.
- Don’t underestimate WhatsApp commerce – WhatsApp is a primary engagement channel for South African businesses, but payments lag. While 69,2% of retailers use WhatsApp for support, payments for sales are overwhelmingly completed through EFT invoices (90,3%). This is a classic last-mile problem. The technology is here, but the trust signals are not. Instead, consider payment links from secure payment gateways to improve trust in WhatsApp ecommerce. Also consider conversational commerce solutions like FlowCart that work in WhatsApp and already connect to ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce.
South Africa’s online retail sector is growing significantly faster than physical stores. To succeed, especially for Black Friday, retailers must provide a fast and frictionless checkout experience, and partner with proven, secure payment providers that offer trusted local options.