Leisure & Entertainment sector surges, Retail grows by 126% on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

South Africa-based digital payments platform Peach Payments shares Black Friday results

Cape Town, 29 November 2022 – The Retail, Leisure & Entertainment and Travel industries were the big online winners over the last four days.

This is the news from South African-based digital payment gateway Peach Payments, sharing details of transactions processed on its platform between Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022.

Things started with a bang on Black Friday, with the biggest transaction of the morning being a 3am purchase to the value of R100 828.00 at a popular online travel agent. The biggest transaction on Cyber Monday (R132 600.00) was also in the travel services industry.

How the full weekend performed
Joshua Shimkin, head of marketing and SME growth, says the overall number of transactions processed on the Peach Payments platform grew by 124% in 2022 compared to 2021. In line with this, the payment volume in Rand value grew by 123% to over R641-million.

Leisure & Entertainment bounces back, Retail grows

Several industries saw impressive year-on-year growth. The Leisure & Entertainment category bounced back after two years of Covid-19 restrictions to grow by 81% this year, and Travel & Accommodation sales grew by 49%. These figures are in line with statistics released by Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in September, which showed an increase in domestic travel in the first half of the year.

As expected, Retail sales grew massively on Black Friday, by 126%. The Food & Beverage category, which had been touted as an area to watch while families take advantage of special offers on basics, grew by 51%.

Shimkin says: “With the growth we’ve seen in many industries over this Black Friday and Cyber Monday, things are looking bright for a strong festive shopping season.”

He advises that merchants who started their prep work well before Black Friday seem to have benefited the most from the day.

“There is no substitute for having good systems and people in place for the festive season. For many of our smaller merchants, Black Friday was a way of checking their ability to cope with the pressures of the upcoming gifting season, which we expect to be up based on what we’ve seen around Black Friday,” he concludes.