Black Friday's biggest spenders revealed, with one person spending R697k
How much did you spend on Black Friday?
Oh, the joys of Black Friday. The thing is that many people go all out over Black Friday deals and then when the month end credit bills arrive, they go into a state of shock.
In this case, we are in a state of shock over the biggest purchases that were made on the day. According to the numbers revealed by some of the big banks, many people spent hundreds of thousands of rands on single transactions during Black Friday deals this year.
The numbers included both online and in-store purchases and the biggest purchase amounted to R697,236.15.
"While it’s unclear exactly what their biggest spenders bought and if these purchases were for items available on Black Friday deals, the figures nonetheless make for interesting reading. The highest number of transactions by a single customer was a Discovery Bank customer who made 70 purchases." (My Broadband)
We are still stuck on the almost R700k purchase...What could that be? Any guesses? The crazy part in figuring it out is that this was a single purchase for that total...
"The table below shows the largest amount for a single transaction recorded by the various banks and the highest number of transactions recorded on a single account for every bank." (My Broadband)
Interestingly enough, all of the banks reported higher spending overall in comparison with last year's Black Friday sales. This is interesting for us, because the levels of unemployment and uncertainty in the job market have been fairly high. So does this mean that people are turning to credit?
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The most popular spending categories were essentials such as groceries followed by petrol, clothing and home improvements. Among merchants on the Absa payment network, Pick n Pay and Takealot.com continued to dominate card-present and card-not-present transactions.
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In addition to the banks, two of the largest online payment platform providers in South Africa, PayGate and PayFast, shared the data of some of their big spenders, and they also noted a significant increase in online transactions and total value of purchases for Black Friday this year in comparison to last year.
"PayGate said one online shopper spent R115,468.38 on a single transaction, while one card recorded 106 transactions during the day. PayFast’s largest single transaction was R169,855." (My Broadband)
We are so intrigued by what the big purchases that were made consisted of, considering it was in a single transaction. But as much as we don't encourage anyone to spend on credit, especially during these uncertain times, we sighed with relief when the banks revealed that majority of purchases were on groceries and transportation.
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