A Record-Breaking Black Friday!

The most intense shopping day of the year once again delivered impressive results. From October through November, we saw a staggering 154% growth — and Black Week alone outperformed last year by an impressive 37%.

But Black Friday itself stole the spotlight, showing a 44% increase compared to 2023. These numbers confirm one thing: Black Friday isn’t just a single day — it’s a critical milestone for every online store owner. It demands thorough planning and solid infrastructure. Fortunately, our newly upgraded gateway delivered flawlessly. Throughout Black Week, including Black Friday, transactions ran smoothly from start to finish.

How pensopay Prepared for This Year’s Surge

How do you navigate such explosive growth? Let’s dive into the planning and thought process behind it.

One single day a year can generate up to 10 times the usual sales volume — and that takes preparation. Whether you're a local clothing store or an online business operating in a more tech-driven space, one thing remains true: on Black Friday, everything needs to work perfectly.

It’s not only brick-and-mortar stores and webshops that feel the pressure — we feel it too at pensopay. That’s why we’re fully staffed around the clock leading up to Black Friday and the days that follow.

The work throughout the year includes optimizing databases to handle increased query volumes, ramping up server capacity with quick scalability options, and closely monitoring all traffic and systems. 

In the weeks leading up to Black Week, we noticed unusually high traffic to our payment applications — especially our Shopify apps. That led us to make last-minute changes to the app and perform significant server scaling to handle the load. Whatever the reason for the spike, we had to act fast to ensure that every transaction during Black Week — especially on Black Friday — would go through smoothly.

All this preparation paid off, allowing us to maintain stable systems and deliver a frictionless payment experience for both merchants and their customers.

Preparing for Next Year’s Black Friday Peak

Black Friday shows no signs of slowing down. Here are a few smart initiatives we’re continuing to build on for next year:

1. Load balancing: To distribute traffic more evenly across servers, we’re implementing more advanced load-balancing technologies to prevent system overloads.
2. Predictive analytics: Using data from past Black Fridays, we’re refining our predictive models to forecast traffic patterns and transaction volumes — enabling us to scale proactively and apply AI-driven optimization.

With these improvements and ongoing development, we’re ready to meet next year’s Black Friday head-on — and the wave of transactions that comes with it.

Whether you’re running a small store or a large tech platform, Black Friday is all about preparation. At pensopay, we take that responsibility seriously and continue to evolve our solutions to ensure the best possible experience for webshops and their customers on the biggest shopping day of the year.

One thing’s for sure: our webshop clients came prepared — with a 44% growth compared to last year!

Are you ready for next year’s Black Friday?

Team pensopay.

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