Someone blew R4 million on Black Friday in South Africa

Payment service provider BankservAfrica says that it recorded a R4 million transaction through its 3D-Secure online card authentication service on Black Friday.

BankservAfrica chief business officer Martin Grunewald said 738,490 transactions were recorded on Black Friday, a 17% improvement on the 628,266 transactions observed in 2020. The total value of 2021’s transactions reached R1 billion.

On Cyber Monday 2021, 432,814 transactions were recorded compared to 372,777 in 2020, representing an increase of 16%.

The organisation found that Black Friday’s total value of transactions was R1 billion, while Cyber Monday hit R516 million.

“The overall Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales certainly performed slightly better than in 2020, which would have benefited retailers and consumers alike wanting to make the most out of this November period of bargains,” said Grunewald.

Notably, the biggest transactions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday were valued at R4 million. That was four times as much as the previous most expensive transaction on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2020.

It was not revealed what items were bought for the R4 million.

According to previous feedback from South African banks, including Absa, Discovery Bank, FNB, Nedbank, and Standard Bank, the biggest single transactions they saw among their customers ranged between R450,010 and R697,236.

The infographic below shows more details about the trends in online shopping in South Africa observed by BankservAfrica on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year.

Now read: South Africa’s biggest Black Friday spenders — including one who spent R697,000