Record Black Friday for the US sees $7.4bn in sales, buoyed by mobile

Unsurprisingly, Black Friday 2019 was the biggest ever edition of the hallowed shopping day, racking up $7.4-billion in sales alone in the United States.

It’s an increase of 43% over the previous year.

According to Adobe Analytics (via Bloomberg), this puts it only just behind 2018’s Cyber Monday as the biggest online sales day on record. $7.9-billion was spent on that particular day.

However, what did markedly increase above and beyond the record Cyber Monday were online sales conducted via smartphone. $2.9-billion in sales were placed via a mobile device, making it the biggest ever shopping day for mobile shoppers.

The above figures only encompass the US, so it’s not clear how much South Africans spent. Google Trends suggests the country’s appetite — at least in terms of search queries — was, interestingly, much larger than that of the US.

FNB recorded record transactions between midnight and 2pm on Black Friday. More than 7.4-million were logged between this period compared to 5.6-million in 2018.

“This represents a 40% increase in transaction volumes compared to the same period last year. Transactions processed through the bank’s Merchant Acquiring Systems peaked at an average of 306 transactions per second,” the company said in a press release on Saturday.

Takealot’s fashion arm Superbalist also believed it had its biggest Black Friday ever. By 7am on the Friday, it had received more than 20 000 orders, it said in a release later that day.

Feature image: kiwihug via Unsplash