Online retail spending for the 2025 festive season shot up 50%, payments giant Visa says.
The Retail Spend Monitor from Visa Consulting & Analytics shows e-commerce continues to expand in South Africa as online retail spending rose 49.9% year on year from 2024, “driven by early-season promotions and convenience”.
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.
In-store retail spend grew 4.1% year on year.
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.
The EFSA study, by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) in partnership with Takealot, shows South Africa’s e-commerce market was projected to grow to R130bn by the end of 2025.
An earlier study by World Wide Worx in collaboration with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika predicted that e-commerce turnover in South Africa would exceed R130bn in 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. 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.”
She said consumers are now more confident about shopping online.
“These insights help businesses adapt to evolving consumer behaviours and prepare for the future of commerce.”
Visa is the world’s largest payments technology company, working with a network of about 14,500 banks and more than 150-million merchants worldwide. Its biggest rival is Mastercard.
Business travel
The company also noted that South Africa benefited from a spike in business travel activity during the B20 and G20 summit week in November.
Spend from travellers into the country “had the most significant impact on spend uplift”, Visa said, peaking at 49% at the end of the summit week compared with the same period in 2024
The increase in spending was felt across several categories during the period, with food and restaurants recording the highest increase with a rise of 29% compared with the same period last year.
Retail stores saw a 28% increase in spending, driven by purchases in apparel, accessories and discount store segments, while air travel and accommodation spend grew 14%, “largely influenced by bookings through travel services and agencies”, with local commute and travel seeing a 10% increase in spend “reflecting heightened business activity in Johannesburg during the summit week”, said Visa.
