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Co-founder Briqpay
October 13, 2026 at 07:00 AM
Black Friday gets the plans, the promotions and the budget. But when we looked at every day of last year's peak in our consumer checkout data, the days around it turned out to need their own plans. Volume and basket size did not move together, and that is worth knowing before 27 November.
Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November, with Cyber Monday on 30 November. For this post we took every day from Friday 21 November to Tuesday 2 December 2025 and measured it against an average autumn day. We looked at two things: how many consumer checkouts completed on each day, and how large the average basket was (order value including VAT, converted to a common currency).
Black Friday itself ran at about nine times a normal day. That is the number most plans start from, and it is right. The second number is the one most plans miss. The Sunday after Black Friday ran at about seven times a normal day. Cyber Monday, which many merchants treat as the second peak, came in at about five times.
The Saturday in between was about four times normal. So the weekend held at high volume for three days, not one. The Sunday is a day many plans treat as an ordinary weekend, and on our data it was the second busiest day of the whole stretch.
Here the days split apart. On Black Friday the average basket was about 4% above a normal autumn day, and on Cyber Monday about 3% above. Those are the two days where shoppers bought at full strength.
The Sunday was different. Volume was about seven times normal, but the average basket was about 5% below a normal day. The Saturday was about 3% below. Shoppers came in large numbers and spent slightly less each time.
The Tuesday after Cyber Monday is the clearest case. Volume was back to about twice a normal day, which is still high, but the average basket was about 27% below normal. It is the lowest basket value of the whole stretch.
We would be careful with the Tuesday figure. It is one day, and a single day is noisier than a full weekend. But it points in the same direction as the Sunday: the closer you get to the end of the sale, the more orders look like top-ups and smaller purchases rather than the planned buys of Friday and Monday.
Three practical points follow.
First, plan Sunday as a peak day. Staff the support desk, check your payment providers' limits, and make sure your monitoring knows that high volume on a Sunday is expected. A plan built around Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone will leave the Sunday under-resourced.
Second, judge Cyber Monday against Cyber Monday. On our data its basket value tracked Black Friday closely. If your Cyber Monday average order value is well below your Black Friday figure, investigate before you decide the promotion failed. The difference may be a product mix or a discount depth issue, not a demand issue.
Third, expect the basket to fall at the end of the sale. If your early December forecasts assume the Black Friday basket, they will overstate revenue per order. The number of orders can stay high while the value of each one drops.
The timing matters more in 2026 than it did in 2025. The EU's revised Consumer Credit Directive, CCD2, applies from 20 November 2026. That is one week before Black Friday, and it covers every day of the weekend that follows. In Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Austria, buy now pay later and invoice purchases placed on Sunday or Tuesday fall under the new rules just as Friday's do. Last year, credit methods carried about half of Swedish checkouts over the peak weekend. If a credit provider is not ready for 20 November, the problem does not stop at Friday.
We covered the rules in the ultimate guide to CCD2 and the week-by-week timeline in the Black Friday 2026 checklist. The market-by-market view is in Black Friday 2026 by market.
The merchants who get the weekend right will be the ones whose checkout is staffed, compliant and answering on the Sunday and the Monday as well as on the Friday.
Methodology note: Figures are drawn from Briqpay's own consumer (B2C) checkout data, covering completed checkouts with internal test transactions excluded. Each day from Friday 21 November to Tuesday 2 December 2025 is compared with the average day from 1 October to 20 November 2025. Volume is a multiple of that average day; basket value is average order value including VAT in a common currency, shown relative to the same average. Figures are indices rather than totals, and we do not name individual providers. Single days are noisier than full weeks, so treat the Tuesday figure as a signal to check against your own data.
On Black Friday 2025, Swedish and Dutch shoppers moved six points toward pay later, Germans moved to wallets and the British stayed with cards. Our consumer checkout data, market by market, and what to put first in each checkout this year.
Card payments acquired in the shopper's own country are approved more often, and between the UK and the EU they can cost five times less. What local acquiring is, what it saves and how to set it up across the Nordics.
CCD2 brings buy now pay later and invoice under consumer credit law on 20 November 2026. What changes at checkout, which countries are ready (the Netherlands and Norway are not), and how exposed each market is, with our own checkout data.
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