Article
How to get ready for peak season in 2025
Tis the season. Get insights to help your business handle the busiest time of year.
It’s no secret that businesses see a spike of sales during peak season. In the UK, Black Friday generated £3b in 2024 through online sales alone.
With such high demand, a smooth checkout experience is a must.
But to stay competitive, you need to go deeper. Success isn't just about handling more transactions, it's how well you can adapt to shopper behaviour and expectations.
Whether your business is online, in-store, or both, here are three ways to turn high-traffic days into revenue growth.
Tip #1: Create a seamless shopper experience
During peak season, heavy traffic puts your checkout to the ultimate test.
No matter the channel, shoppers expect a fast, consistent checkout that lets them pay with their preferred payment methods.
According to our 2025 Retail Report, 53% of shoppers will abandon a checkout if they can’t pay how they want.
By offering the right mix of bank and alternative payment methods, you can increase conversion rates:
Local payment methods (LPMs): Our data collected during last year's Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend found that LPMs deliver a global ATV that’s 26% higher than other methods.
Digital wallets: Options like Apple Pay and Google Pay offer faster, more secure checkouts by streamlining steps.
Contactless payments: On our platform, contactless payments in the US rose to 58% during BFCM between 2023 and 2024, while globally they hit 81%, showing a demand for speed and convenience.
Tap to Pay on iPhone: Its popularity is increasingly growing with businesses. Perfect for cutting queues and improving the in-store experience.
Adopting an omnichannel approach is crucial to meeting shopper expectations during peak season.
And with Adyen’s unified platform, you can remove friction so every payment is fast and easy—wherever they shop.
Tip #2: Turn insights into better decision-making
The goal during peak season is to maximise conversion without opening the door to fraud.
But shopper behaviour changes this time of year. A customer who normally places two orders a month might suddenly place five.
Our data also shows that the average transaction value rises by nearly 30% on Black Friday compared to a typical day, which might look suspicious to a rigid rule-based system.
So it's important to be able to distinguish a genuine customer on a shopping spree from a fraud attempt.
Our solution, Adyen Uplift, optimises for conversion, risk, and cost by using machine learning built on our global payments network.
This means recognising good shoppers, minimising false positives, and optimising payment routing.
The result? Higher conversion and sales.
Tip #3: Engage customers with charitable giving
Today’s consumers want to shop with brands that share their values.
Our research shows that 79% already give to charity, and 44% say they’d be more loyal to a retailer with a strong social purpose.
By letting your customers donate at checkout during peak season, you'll support meaningful causes and give customers a reason to return.
With Adyen Giving, you can offer customers the option to donate at checkout with minimal effort:
100% of every donation goes directly to charity, and we cover all transaction fees.
In 2025, we'll match all donations made through our platform.
Activation is simple with no integration needed for in-person payments, and a small one required for online.
Turn peak season traffic into more sales
Peak season is a chance to turn high traffic into lasting growth.
From offering a consistent checkout across every channel to using data to increase conversion, you can maximise your performance.
Learning from peak season can also help you build a stronger, more resilient business year-round.
By understanding the trends and investing in the right technology, you'll set yourself up for success—in 2025 and beyond.
To make this your best season yet, get our peak season playbook for everything you need.
Blog methodology
The data in this blog if not referenced otherwise was collected during two key periods: Black Friday Day, which spans Friday, November 29, 2024, from 00:00 New Zealand Daylight Time to 23:59 Pacific Standard Time, and Black Friday Cyber Monday Weekend, which runs from Friday, November 29, 2024, at 00:00 New Zealand Daylight Time to Monday, December 2, 2024, at 23:59 Pacific Standard Time. All data represents transactions processed on the Adyen platform during these periods, aggregated at the platform level to ensure anonymity and protect data privacy.
5. Peak season is your biggest opportunity to learn
The decisions made during peak season shouldn't end when the season does. Reviewing payment performance, customer behavior, and operational trends creates a stronger foundation for future optimization — not just next Black Friday but throughout the year.
Questions to ask your team
Which metrics will define success beyond revenue?
Are we measuring authorization performance alongside conversion?
How will we review what worked and what didn't?
Which opportunities should become priorities after peak season?
Questions every retailer should ask before peak season
Customer experience
□ Can customers pay using their preferred payment methods?
□ Have we reviewed checkout performance across every channel?
□ Are there any unnecessary points of friction before payment?
Promotions & loyalty
□ Are our promotions rewarding the right customers, rather than everyone? □ Can we personalize offers across online and in-store experiences? □ Have we reviewed safeguards against promotion and policy abuse?
Payments & risk
□ Have fraud settings been reviewed for seasonal shopping behavior?
□ Are we monitoring false positives alongside fraud rates?
□ Is our authentication strategy optimized for both conversion and risk?
Operations
□ Does every team understand incident ownership and escalation?
□ Are dashboards and alerts ready before peak traffic begins?
□ Have refund and dispute processes been reviewed?
Performance
□ Have we agreed on the metrics we'll monitor throughout peak season?
□ Do we have a plan to review performance after BFCM?
□ Have we identified opportunities for improvement next year?
Final thought
The retailers that perform best during peak season are rarely the ones making last-minute changes. They're the ones that have reviewed their customer experience, aligned their teams, and prepared for how shoppers actually behave during the busiest shopping period of the year.
Peak season may only last a few weeks, but the decisions made before it (and the insights gathered afterwards) can improve performance long after Black Friday/Cyber Monday ends.
"It's easy to view peak season as a sprint to survive, but the most successful retailers view it as their greatest opportunity to learn. The data you collect over these few weeks provides an invaluable roadmap for the rest of the year. By analyzing how your systems, fraud rules, and customer touchpoints handled the pressure, you can turn seasonal insights into a year-round competitive advantage. And who knows? In the world of modern retail, any ordinary day can turn into peak season if you happen to go viral!" — Priyanka Agrawal, Global Retail Lead, Adyen