Durban - FNB customers made purchases worth over R3 billion this Black Friday.
The bank said this was the highest Black Friday spending reported in the past four years.
The bank said in a statement that over R2.4bn was spent in-store (card-present), whereas over R670 million was online shopping (card-not-present).
Chris Labuschagne, CEO of FNB Card, said FNB Virtual Cards also saw a significant increase in spending, accounting for over R137m in purchases compared with just R36m during 2021 Black Friday, a 280% increase.
“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, including travel and transportation, groceries, clothing and entertainment, experienced 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.”
Ashley Saffy, head of business development at FNB Card, said the bank had noted that customers were increasingly choosing safer payment methods, such as using virtual cards for online spend and doing contactless card and device transactions for in-store purchases.
“The value of online (card-not-present) spend increased by 31% compared with 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 with 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.”