Figures from AIB show that Black Friday 2023 broke all records for online spend and indications are that this year will be no different as shoppers hunt for good value ahead of Christmas.
AIB’s latest Spend Trend reveals that Irish shoppers spent €105m spent online on Black Friday last year on almost 1 million transactions, the busiest day for online spend ever.
€4.3m was spent every hour, €73,000 every minute or €1,200 every second.
The busiest hours for spend was between 10am and 11am with over 57,000 transactions in that hour.
Black Friday 2023 was 11% busier than Black Friday 2022.
AIB noted that 57% of spend on the day was online, with 43% instore. Spend in shops was up 1% on 2022 to €80m.
The data was compiled from over 979,000 online card transactions carried out by AIB customers during Black Friday last year and has been anonymised and aggregated.
The survey showed that Black Friday 2023 was the busiest day of the year for clothing retailers with AIB customers spending €15m buying clothes – 61% of this was online.
Over the 24 hours, AIB’s women customers spent an average of €590 per second while its male customers spent €548 per second.
Spending was up in every county with the biggest increase in Longford, with spending up 23%, followed by Roscommon (19%), Sligo and Carlow (18%).
AIB noted that people from Dublin (€107), Wicklow and Roscommon (€104) spent the most per transaction while people from Carlow spent the least (€92).
Meanwhile, spending online on Black Friday 2023 was 29% higher than Cyber Monday, which takes place three days later.
Adrian Moynihan, Head of Consumer, at AIB, is urging people who are shopping on Black Friday to be fraud aware as the number of scams will be on the rise at this time of year.
“Remember, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said.
“Shopping locally helps to lower carbon emissions and supports local communities too so it’s encouraging to see consumers also availed of good deals in store, with about €80m spent in shops,” he noted.
“This was only a slight increase on the previous year, demonstrating the continuing trend toward online shopping,” he added.
Article Source – €4.3m spent every hour on Black Friday last year – AIB Spend Trend – RTE