The deal is unbelievable – 70% off – but you’re lucky if you can take advantage of it. That’s the story for hopeful shoppers visiting one of South Africa’s leading online retailers, Superbalist. Discounts for Black Friday range from 40% to 70%, but by Friday afternoon numerous products were marked sold out.
Payment processors, too, seemed to go down frequently. According to PayFast, FNB experienced some authorisation challenges, which affected all major payment processors, and sometimes rejected transactions – even ones that had nothing to do with Black Friday. Payments to both Vodacom for bills and SABC for TV license fees could not be processed at various times. Later in the day, the problems seemed to have been resolved.
In 2018, Black Friday frustration with Takealot.com – by far the country’s largest online retailer – was largely a result of payment processors unable to cope with demand. Kim Reid, CEO of Takealot, told Gadget that the company had worked closely with providers this year, and made sure it had both technological and human capacity in place.
“During Black Friday 2018, our scaling preparations across all of our platforms ensured that the site remained online and performed well under the extensive load. Unfortunately, our third-party credit card payment provider was not able to withstand the increased volumes, causing payment issues for some customers, which were out of our control. Due to this the credit card payment gateway was intermittently deactivated while our provider restored their service.
“During this time shoppers were encouraged to make use of other payment methods and our team worked through all affected transactions, manually authorising orders where payments were made but did not reflect on our site.
“To avoid a repeat this year, we have worked closely with payment providers throughout the year. They will be deeply involved over season, and have also worked with us on load testing their systems. Additional providers have also been added.”
Visit the next page to read about the infrastructure that was put in place to cope with the demand of the shopping season.
Reid said the infrastructure was in place to ensure it could cope with the massive demand of the shopping season.
“We have scaled operations across multiple areas within the business. This includes, but isn’t limited to, increasing our driver count to over 4,500, and increasing our warehouse storage space – now 75 000 square metres.
“We’ve also opened 47 Takealot Pickup Points nationwide allowing shoppers to collect and return their orders at a time convenient to them and real-time reporting software to allow us to monitor and manage deliveries. We’ve also worked with our branches throughout South Africa to ensure that all deliveries are carried out as efficiently as possible.
“From a tech perspective, the infrastructure in place is predominantly based on dynamic capacity available by using cloud infrastructure. Essentially, we have added more capacity to meet the requirements based on load test outcomes. At takealot.com, 100% of our core production infrastructure uses public cloud. However, warehouse infrastructure, for example, is run in the warehouse itself.”
Despite all the preparations, a handful of consumers reported intermittent outages in the course of the day, with most complaints at 1am. Far more complaints were made about Black Friday “deals” that were virtually the same as regular prices. Takealot said this was a result of consumers comparing Black Friday prices to Blue Dot Sale prices.
OneDayOnly.co.za, possibly the fastest growing ecommerce site in South Africa warned that “South Africans are the second-most price sensitive society in the world, with three out of four consumers knowing the prices of goods that they regularly buy”.
“Us South Africans are seriously savvy when it comes to deal hunting. So much so that people are watching multiple screens to make sure they stay on top of deal announcements of the Black Friday weekend,” said Matthew Leighton, spokesperson for OneDayOnly.co.za. “This morning when we announced via social that our first 100% off deal was available, an instant spike in shopper volume recorded on our site. This shows just how closely South Africans keep an eye on the 100%-off deal drops via social media, and that people are increasingly hungry for real discounts.
“10% off if you spend over R1 000 just won’t cut it anymore in South Africa and its time we start experiencing true Black Friday deals locally.”
The 100%-off deals – in effect free goods – include electronics like TVs and washing machines, but users have to be on the site as the deals are announced. Leighton said over R1-million of 100% off deals were up for grabs until midnight.
Payfast advised merchants that temporary processes would be in place from 28 November to 4 December 2019.
Among other, there will be no telephone support for buyers, who are requested to send queries to support@payfast.co.za on Black Friday and over the weekend.
“For urgent queries, we have established a merchants-only hotline,” it advised merchants. “Kindly note that this will be a temporary merchant support line during the stated period.”
Visit the next page to find out what the transaction volume increase has been in South Africa.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, FNB reported that, by 2pm on Black Friday, the total number of transactions processed through its Merchant Acquiring Systems – in other words credit card payments through its merchant customers – were up a third over last year’s Black Friday at the same time. 7.4 million compared to 5.6 million in 2018.
It said transactions processed through the bank’s Merchant Acquiring Systems peaked at an average of 306 transactions per second (TPS).
“While transactional volumes will normalise later in the day, last minute shopping may lead to intermittent spikes in volumes until retailers close their doors,” said CEO of FNB Merchant Services, Thokozani Dlamini. “Online merchants have the luxury of opening until midnight while traditional retailers may consider opening for longer than usual to accommodate the after-hours rush.”
Online merchants like Takealot, Zando and the eBucks Shop were among the top online retailers where FNB customers bought discounted goods and services.
Cilliers Kriel, CEO of FNB Credit Card, said: “Overall, we expect card present transactions to make up the majority of card spend by close of business, however there’s a firm indication that South Africa’s consumers are growing accustomed to shopping online. As the day draws to a close, we encourage customers to shop wisely by sticking to their budgets to accommodate the longer festive season period.”