Last week hosted Black Friday. Today is Cyber Monday. Saturday was… well, Saturday. But it was a very Black-Friday-centric weekend of ‘deals’ if you can call them that. Only a few of these deals were actually any good, and most were downright tragic. Still, that didn’t stop people from spending their hard-earned money on deals that we’ll (probably) see again in a month or two. How do we know this? Well, FNB does tend to make a spectacle of things.
The bank reports that on Black Friday its customers spent more than R3 billion collectively – R748,546,200,000 less than what Elon paid for Twitter. It’s the most money FNB has seen spent on Black Friday in the past four years, according to the bank. Which isn’t a surprise considering that pandemic we had a little while ago.
That’s a lot of dough
Unsurprisingly, most of FNB’s customers spent their money in person, spending over R2.4 billion using physical cards. Only R670 million was spent online – which is, again, unsurprising, considering how Takealot usually handles its products when deals are on the table. The last R137 million was spent using customers’ virtual cards – a handy addition if you’re looking to save money on petrol.
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FNB noted that, compared to last year, virtual card expenditure increased by 36% while online spending increased by 31%. In-store spending only went up 18% comparatively, which shows FNB that more customers are slowly edging towards using safer methods of purchase. The ‘safer methods’ FNB is referring to is a virtual card’s ability to change its CVV digits every hour.
“In a market where consumers are seeing an increase in the cost of living, many were 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,” says Chris Labuschagne, CEO of FNB Card.