South Africa’s shift towards online retail accelerated over the Black Friday weekend, with consumers directing a greater share of their spending to e-commerce platforms than ever before.
Standard Bank said online sales by its customers rose 75% year on year, contributing 23% to total retail sales over Black Friday weekend, including Cyber Monday, with value spent at e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon and Takealot surging.
“Total transaction volumes were up 6.6% year on year and value up by 7.2% compared to 2024,” Standard Bank said.
“[We saw] double-digit growth in credit card spend – transaction value grew by 12% compared to last year, while debit card spend was up 6% year on year. Digital wallet transactions grew by 60% in value and contributed 11% to total spend.”
Data from Capitec paints a similar picture. Capitec customers increased their Black Friday spending by 14% year on year to R28.8-billion. Online spending surged 43% year on year with shopping at Chinese retailer Shein increasing from R35-million in 2024 to R92-million in 2025. Comparatively, in-store spend rose by “only” 11%, led by Shoprite.
“Standout client activity included a R500 000 single transaction and R4.3-million total spend by one client. While in-store activity remains the dominant contributor to total spend, the shift towards digital channels is accelerating,” said Capitec.
World Wide Worx in September predicted that South Africa’s online sales as a proportion of total retail revenue would breach the 10% mark by January 2026. Growth in online spend over the Black Friday weekend suggests the retail sector is on track to meet this prediction. In fact, Standard Bank’s 23% online spend rate is even higher.
Amazon goes big
US-headquartered megaretailer Amazon enjoyed its second Black Friday event since launching local operations in May 2024. Robert Koen, Amazon’s MD for sub-Saharan Africa, said Black Friday 2025 was the company’s biggest event yet, showing how South African customers are increasingly confident shopping online.
“They are using Black Friday to purchase everyday essentials like rice, maize meal and toiletries alongside traditional electronics, making smaller, frequent purchases rather than bulk buying. This reflects Black Friday’s evolution from a single-day event to an extended, value-driven shopping period where consumers strategically buy necessities as needed through digital channels,” said Koen.
Read: Online shopping boom in South Africa
“What also stood out was the expectation for speed – customers wanted their Black Friday purchases quickly, with same-day and next-day delivery options proving extremely popular. This reinforces that convenience and reliability are just as important as price in the South African market.”
Grocery shopping remains a key Black Friday activity for local shoppers, many of whom use the occasion to stock up on essentials ahead of festive season celebrations. Shoprite Group-owned online grocery delivery platform Sixty60 reported record sales over the Black Friday weekend, with the Saturday recording the highest number of daily orders on the platform since its November 2019 launch.
“In recent years we’ve seen Black Friday evolve from a single-day shopping rush to a carefully planned, value-driven shopping occasion for South African consumers, who are increasingly using digital channels to hunt for deals ahead of the festive season. More than 1.9 million users visited the app, and more than 7.5 million products were picked over Black Friday weekend,” said Shoprite.
The increase in online sales activity over Black Friday weekend was also evident to the last-mile logistics sector.
Bob Group MD Andy Higgins told TechCentral that its logistics aggregation platform, Bob Go, saw around 25% year-on-year revenue growth over Black Friday. But scaling logistics for the expected spike in demand is no easy feat.
“It is a challenge. Often vehicles and drivers must be brought in on a temporary basis, and the sector usually leans into the gig economy for it. There is a learning curve for those people because they are using driver apps and such, so what you have to do is overprovision ahead of time and absorb the costs so that the drivers are ready when they are needed during the busy period,” said Higgins.
Scaling infrastructure to meet Black Friday demand is not limited to vehicles and drivers. From a technical perspective, all players across the e-commerce value chain must maintain uptime during the spike in demand so that all players benefit from higher sales. On Friday, technical issues at FNB disrupted customers’ ability to process payments.
Higgins said Bob Shop, the group’s e-commerce platform, grew sales by 45% year on year over Black Friday weekend, but the network issue at FNB was a significant dampener on sales. He said industry colleagues reported the same observation.
Positive sentiment
Despite the technical glitches, market-wide sentiment regarding Black Friday was overwhelmingly positive. It coincided with other macroeconomic positives like a 0.5 basis point drop in the prime lending rate by the Reserve Bank.
Read: R1-million spent in a single click as Black Friday heats up
“We had 49% gross market value growth from our marketplace and for us that is a positive sign. It feels like we have got all the tailwinds behind us and the general sentiment is positive. We are talking about close to 10% of retail getting online and next year we should reach that milestone,” he said. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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