Black Friday on course to be ‘busiest ever’ as spending beats last year

This year’s Black Friday is on track to be the “busiest ever” as shoppers shake off cost-of-living woes to make the most of festive deals, spending data has revealed.

Nationwide Building Society said that sales volumes on Friday show people have been making more purchases than this time last year.

By midday, customers had made 3.22 million transactions, which is 14% higher than than a typical Friday and 5% more than Black Friday 2022.

It is also 13% more than the same day in 2021, Nationwide said.

Mark Nalder, director of payment strategy at Nationwide, said the morning’s purchase data “suggests that this year’s Black Friday is going to be the busiest one ever”.

“Our data shows that bargain hunters are already out in force with the number of transactions made by 9am up 15% compared to the same period on Black Friday last year,” Nalder added.

Meanwhile, rival banking group Barclays revealed that the volume of purchases leading up to Black Friday were higher than this time last year, as retailers continue to launch sales earlier in the month.

Data from the firm, which processes nearly half of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions, showed spending volumes were up 1.4% in the week to Wednesday compared with the equivalent week last year.

Marc Pettican, the head of Barclaycard Payments, said the uptick in spending would come as “welcome news” to retailers who will be hoping sales remain boosted throughout the weekend.

He said: “Over the last few years we’ve seen Black Friday sales arrive earlier and earlier, with shoppers spreading their spending over a longer period of time.

“Although the cost of living may be impacting some shoppers’ spending on non-essential items, many are still taking the opportunity to bag a Black Friday bargain.”

Meanwhile data from Buy Now, Pay Later giant Klarna has revealed that 56% of UK shoppers say they’ve already started Christmas shopping and a significant 30% say they had started before October (a 13% increase compared to 2022).

Almost two thirds of its app users (63%) said they intended to make a purchase in the Black Friday sales, with almost 9 in 10 Gen Z consumers (89%) and 81% of Millennials planning to shop during the discounting bonanza.

Data from the Klarna app revealed that 1 in 6 of the 25,000 most popular items on sale in the UK were discounted during Black Friday with discounting on average 16% deeper than it had been during the prior week. The biggest discounts were found across electronics and video games. Shoes and clothing that are on sale are on average 20% cheaper than they were in the prior week.