BankservAfrica, Africa’s largest automated payments clearing house, has published transaction data from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in South Africa for 2017.

According to the group, it processed 4.7 million card transactions, of which 260,552 were online transactions, on Black Friday, 24 November 2017.

Black Friday shoppers were the most active between 16:00 – 17:00 when 395,791 store transactions were processed, it said.

There were R2.5 billion worth of debit and credit card retail transactions, up from R2.3 billion in 2016.

Black Friday also proved to be more popular than Cyber Monday – 260,552 transactions were cleared on Black Friday compared to Cyber Monday’s 129,458.

The most expensive transaction for Black Friday was valued at R1 million. For Cyber Monday, this was R663,041.

“The sheer size and value of the transactions processed during Black Friday, and the growth experienced on 2016’s figures, reflects the success of this annual shopper’s day,” said Chris Hamilton, CEO of BankservAfrica.

“On our end, Black Friday has been a remarkable day in the performance of our payment system with transactional clearances being twice our daily average.”