Online retail spending for the 2025 festive season shot up 50%, payments giant Visa says. This translated to 11.5% of retail spend during the 2025 holiday being driven by e-commerce, with in‑store sales accounting for the rest. Visa’s monitor analyses retail sales activity over a seven-week period beginning on November 1, using a subset of Visa payments network data in South Africa and survey-based estimates for other payment methods.
The company’s findings are in line with recent data by the Ecommerce Forum South Africa (EFSA), which reported that e-commerce in the country has grown from 1% to nearly 10% of retail sales in just five years. An earlier study by World Wide Worx in collaboration with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika predicted that e-commerce turnover in South Africa wouldexceed R130bnin the same period. Previously, Visa had found a 27.4% increase in retail e-commerce spend in 2023-24.
Sandy Samaan, head of consulting and analytics at Visa for Southern, East, West and Central Africa told Business Day a number of factors were driving this adoption. “We see a lot of changes. It’s about convenience.
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When you’re talking about the holiday season, people want to shop online and have things delivered.” “E-commerce is being embraced more and more across the globe with South Africa also seeing an uptick. The option provides customers with security, valid transactions and the certainty of delivery on time.”
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