During Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) last year, Stripe processed up to 152,000 transactions per minute. That activity reveals how peak season commerce is changing: demand is concentrating into fewer, spendier days; fraud attempts are becoming more sophisticated and sustained; and buy now, pay later is playing a bigger role in how shoppers buy.

Using Stripe's transaction data from the 2025 holiday shopping period, this guide highlights three trends shaping peak season and what they mean for businesses preparing for the 2026 rush.

For retailers planning their infrastructure, checkout flows and omnichannel strategies in the months ahead, these trends offer a clearer picture of how peak season shopping is changing and where preparation can make the biggest difference.

Holiday demand is ramping up later and peaking faster

Retailers are starting holiday promotions earlier, but shoppers appear to be holding out for the biggest perceived deals.

Despite weeks of early sales, demand among the retail cohort analysed here still clusters in a relatively narrow window around Black Friday. In 2025, transaction volume didn't rise into a sustained above-average pattern until a little over a week before Black Friday and lasted through 19 December.

What changed in 2025 was how abruptly that spending surge hit.

The pattern suggests that shoppers became more deliberate about when they were willing to buy. Market data indicates consumers spent more of November researching, comparing prices and waiting for the deepest discounts – then made their purchase once Black Friday deals arrived. That points to a holiday shopper who was more price-sensitive last year amid higher prices, smaller markdowns and broader economic uncertainty.

In 2024, demand built more gradually among this retail cohort, with scattered spikes through early November. In 2025, on the other hand, spending held steady near the Q4 baseline through mid-month, then turned sharply upward around 17 November, 10 days before Black Friday. Instead of a slow ramp, the season snapped into high gear.

Once that upswing arrived, it was stronger than prior years. In the week leading into Black Friday 2025, daily payment volume reached 2.4x the annual daily average – roughly 20% higher on a relative basis than in the prior 2 years. During the BFCM period itself, spending reached nearly 4x a typical day.

What this means for businesses

Holiday spending is becoming less of a gradual buildup and more of a sharp surge. If your systems are not ready before that surge begins, there's less time to recover once traffic spikes.

The French retailer La Redoute saw nearly two million site visits per day over Black Friday weekend, for example. At that level of demand, payments infrastructure needs to keep working reliably, so teams can stay focused on the customer experience, rather than performance issues. A brief outage or slowdown during peak traffic can translate to thousands of lost transactions and the revenue tied to them. Even small sources of friction – latency, extra checkout steps or payment failures – can have an outsized impact when large numbers of shoppers are trying to buy at once.

For businesses, the takeaway is to treat the 10 days before Black Friday as part of the real peak. Stress-test payment flows early and optimise your checkout for speed, reliability and volume. Accelerated payment options can streamline checkout during peak periods by allowing returning customers to check out faster using saved payment details, rather than re-entering card and billing information each time.

The holiday fraud threat now stretches across the season

Stripe data shows fraud risk starts well before BFCM and remains high throughout December. In 2025, fraud activity started trending upward on 8 November, with continued spikes over the rest of the year. Attackers are stretching their activity across the holiday season – not just concentrating it around Black Friday weekend.

For the retail cohort analysed here, fraud reached approximately 1.4% of total payment volume during the 4-day BFCM window in 2025, 1.7x the fraud volume of a typical 4-day period. Over that span, Stripe blocked over $75 million in suspected fraudulent transaction volume across the cohort.

Fraud tactics are shifting, as well. Bad actors are using automation and AI-driven tools to test stolen cards and probe for weaknesses at scale. At the same time, first-party fraud – where legitimate customers abuse return or refund policies – is also on the rise. During peak season, that can take several forms, including refund abuse, promo abuse (repeated use of discounts or other attempts to game promotional offers) and "wardrobing" (customers buy clothing, wear it briefly and then return it). Global losses from refund abuse are estimated to reach approximately $100 billion each year. According to the National Retail Federation's 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report, 49% of Gen Z shoppers that returned at least one online purchase in a 12-month period admitted to wardrobing.

What this means for businesses

For many businesses, the high-risk fraud period now spans months rather than days.

Businesses that rely on outdated fraud systems or overly aggressive rules might see rising chargebacks or false declines that block legitimate customers. Since many shoppers will not retry a purchase after a declined payment, poor fraud tooling can quietly erode revenue during the most important sales period of the year.

Refund abuse is especially difficult to detect at checkout. In cases like wardrobing, the customer and payment credentials are legitimate, which makes abuse much harder to catch at the time of purchase. By the time patterns emerge, businesses might already be absorbing the cost through refunds, lost margin, degraded inventory value and return processing costs.

Buy now, pay later is scaling fast and showing up in bigger purchases

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is becoming an increasingly common part of how shoppers make purchase decisions.

Across Stripe businesses, the BNPL share of transaction volume during Black Friday and Cyber Monday tripled year over year, rising from 1% in 2024 to 3% in 2025 – its highest level in the past 3 years.

BNPL is also showing up in larger baskets: in 2025, the average order value for BNPL transactions increased 3%. That suggests shoppers are turning to instalment payments when carts get heavier – whether that's multiple gifts, higher priced items or both.

This shift changes the role BNPL plays. It's no longer just a convenience at checkout; it's starting to shape how much customers are willing to spend – and whether they're willing to complete a purchase at all. In a Stripe survey conducted last year by NewStore, 53% of previous BNPL users said they were more likely to shop with a retailer that offers BNPL, and 71% said it expanded their purchasing power.

What this means for businesses

During peak season, payment flexibility can be a conversion tool, especially when shoppers are making larger purchases. If BNPL options are unavailable or poorly surfaced during peak traffic periods, businesses risk losing high-intent customers who are looking for flexible payment options.

Peak season 2026 preparation checklist

Download the full report, including a peak season 2026 preparation checklist.