On Black Friday, traffic triples and systems are tested to their limits, but it is precisely at checkout that most sales are lost.
Every extra second of loading time, every additional field to fill in, every missing payment method or payment processing error can cost real sales.
In this article, find out why the payment checkout makes or breaks your Black Friday, and what you need to check before the busiest period of the year begins.
What is the real cost of a slow checkout?
On average, around 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before the purchase is completed, according to data from the Baymard Institute. Black Friday doesn’t fix this figure, it amplifies it: the same problem, multiplied by the highest traffic volume of the year.
At the root of this result is checkout speed. According to a study by Portent, which analysed more than 100 million page views across online stores, a store that loads in 1 second converts around 2.5 times more than a store that takes 5 seconds.
At a time when every visit is worth more than usual, this difference has a disproportionate impact on revenue.
Tips for preparing your checkout for Black Friday
During the busiest season of the year, get ready to sell more, whatever the circumstances.
To do so:
1. Pay attention to every feature of your checkout
The more steps a customer has to complete before paying, the greater the chance they’ll give up halfway through. On Black Friday, with customers buying on impulse and in a hurry, every extra step weighs even more.
To reduce this friction, you should include features such as:
- Pre-filled digital wallets (for example, Apple Pay or Google Pay), which let customers complete a purchase with a single confirmation;
- Smart autofill, which reuses saved details instead of asking for everything again;
- A mobile-optimised checkout, as a large share of Black Friday traffic comes from smartphones;
- Local payment methods, because Portuguese customers would rather pay with MB WAY or Multibanco than enter the details of an international card.
2. Prepare your system for payment failures
Black Friday tests payment infrastructure at a volume far above normal, and it’s only natural for slowdowns and occasional network failures to occur. What separates a well-prepared checkout from a fragile one is what happens after such a failure.
Imagine this scenario: a customer tries to pay €100, the network lags, and the request is sent a second time without the customer realising that the first one had already been processed. Without the right mechanism, this can result in two charges for the same order, and a chargeback waiting to happen.
The technical property that prevents this problem is called idempotency. It guarantees that even if the same payment request is sent several times, the outcome is always the same, avoiding failed payments and duplicate charges.
3. Let customers pay with their favourite payment method
A checkout that only accepts cards is, in practice, excluding a significant part of the Portuguese public.
Today, MB WAY leads online payment preferences in Portugal, and Multibanco remains a trusted method for many consumers. On Black Friday, this detail matters even more: a customer in a rush who can’t find the method they use every day is likely to give up, rather than look for their physical card or fill in a longer form.
Checklist: are you ready for Black Friday?
Before the sales peak arrives, it’s worth confirming the following:
1. Conversion
- Does the checkout load quickly, even under heavy traffic?
- Do you have digital wallets enabled (Apple Pay, Google Pay, MB WAY)?
- Is the checkout optimised for mobile?
- Is data autofill working correctly?
2. Reliability
- Does your payment gateway guarantee idempotency?
- Have you tested your infrastructure under high load?
- Is there a contingency plan in case something fails?
3. Coverage
- Do you offer at least 4 to 5 payment methods?
- Are Multibanco and MB WAY natively integrated?
- Are international cards and mobile wallets enabled?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, there’s still time to put things right before Black Friday.
Prepare your store’s checkout for Black Friday with easypay
Black Friday isn’t just a marketing test, it’s an infrastructure test.
With easypay, your checkout is ready with the payment methods most used by the Portuguese, reliability guarantees under heavy traffic, and all the technical support you need for the biggest sales peak of the year.
Request a commercial proposal from easypay today and get your store’s checkout ready before Black Friday arrives.
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