Integrated Payments Can Prime UK Retailers for Black Friday Success: Lloyds Bank Merchant Services 

With this year’s Black Friday falling on 29th November and Cyber Monday on 2nd December, aka “Cyber Weekend”, retailers across the UK are gearing up for the year’s biggest spending event in the run-up to the Christmas holiday season. Last year’s Black Friday achieved record sales of £13.3 billion, up 7.6% from 2022. 

Lloyds Bank Merchant Services, the bank’s card payments processing and acceptance unit, is encouraging retail merchants to ensure that their payment platforms are ready to capitalise on the volume surges expected over Black Friday., while protecting customers through tools like strong customer authentication (SCA), 2-factor authentication, and PCI DSS data encryption. Enabling shoppers to pay through a variety of cards, digital wallets and alternative payment methods, and ensuring that checkouts and platforms aren’t disrupted by downtime, will be essential if retailers are to reap the full rewards of Black Friday sales. 

Melinda Roylett, Managing Director of Merchant Services, Lloyds Banking Group says: “Retail merchants can take advantage of POS and payment platforms that integrate powerful data analytics, payments acceptance optimisation, and secure payment processing with 99.999% platform uptime, to ensure they can give consumers a smooth, quick and protected checkout.  Other services like chargeback management, fraud monitoring and T+1 settlement are also available, enabling retailers to convert more transactions at lower cost, and  gain more cashflow visibility and reduce chargeback rates.”

Knowing which are the most popular consumer spending categories during peak sales events can help retail merchants to create more targeted offers and incentives for shoppers that can generate more transaction conversions and stronger revenues for Black Friday 2024. Lloyds Bank understands changing consumer behaviour can have a huge impact on retailers, and that being ahead of the curve can mean that retailers can reap the full rewards of major shopping events.  

Lloyds Bank Market Intelligence (LBMI) analyses aggregated and anonymised data from Lloyds Banking Group’s 26 million retail customers in Great Britain to help business leaders understand their customers, competitors, and market.

In its analysis of 10 popular spending verticals* during the week of 20th-24th November 2023, including Black Friday 2023, LBMI tracked the impact of Black Friday across different retail subsectors, channels, and demographics. For example, the data found that Millennials spent the most in retail subsectors analysed (£83,800,854), followed by Gen X (£71,561,958). Other stand-out findings include: 

• Retailers enjoyed 35% higher spend value, along with 15% higher spend volume, and 17% higher average transaction value than an equivalent working week in October 2023. 
• Gen X spent the most per transaction on average (£46), compared to Millennials (£43) and Baby Boomers (£43), the Silent Generation (£41), and Gen Z (£38). 
• Apart from the Silent Generation (born between 1927 and 1946), every generation spent more online than offline in the retail subsectors analysed, with Millennials having the biggest difference in online vs offline spend. 
• Of the retail subsectors analysed, Gen Z spent the most on clothing (both offline and online). All other generations spent the most offline on clothing, and the most online at department or specific online stores. 

Lloyds Bank Merchant Services handles card payments for 34,000 in the UK, giving it a bird’s eye view of overall transaction trends, while Lloyds dives deeper into transaction data via LBMI. These vast datasets represent the largest pool of transaction data in the UK, giving Lloyds and its retailers unique insights. LBMI constantly analyses consumer behaviour impacting the retail sector, and its teams work with leading retailers to provide actionable insights to help them plan their next move, identify growth opportunities, and stay ahead.  

Melinda Roylett says: “When margins are tight and customers are looking for the best bargains, merchants can provide a great customer experience with targeted offers, generating more sales and bolstering revenues. Retailers should use a payments platform with consistent uptime and a wide range of payment methods, which is secure, reliable and flexible enough to handle the volume spikes during peak sales periods like Black Friday. With the right tools, tech, and hand-in-hand support, retailers will not just survive Cyber Weekend, but also have the data that will help them thrive well into the future.”