Five payment checks before Black Friday

Black Friday readiness starts before traffic arrives

Preparing for Black Friday often begins with discounts, inventory, promotional campaigns, and plans to attract shoppers. But generating demand is only part of the opportunity. Your checkout must help interested customers complete their purchases.

The volume processed during recent Black Friday to Cyber Monday periods demonstrates why payment readiness matters. In 2025, Stripe handled 152,000 transactions per minute at the busiest point and delivered more than 99.9999% uptime. More than 150,000 merchants had their best day ever during the same period.

The following five checks translate those broader payment trends into practical areas PrestaShop merchants can review before Black Friday.

1. Test the complete checkout journey

Walk through your PrestaShop checkout from product selection to payment confirmation. Test the experience as a customer would rather than reviewing each page in isolation.

At checkout, every field and step should have a clear purpose. Check whether instructions are easy to understand, whether the next action is obvious, and whether customers can recover easily if they make an input or payment error.

Pay attention to:

• The number of fields customers must complete
• Whether costs and order details are clear
• How payment errors are explained
• Whether customers return to the correct step after an error
• How long it takes to move from cart to confirmation

Checkout improvements can deliver measurable merchant value. Stripe reports that businesses using Payment Element saw 11.9% more revenue on average. Reducing friction can significantly help more customers complete their purchases.

Test any changes before Black Friday so you have time to identify issues and understand how the revised experience performs.

2. Review the payment methods enabled in your Stripe module

Customers expect to find a familiar way to pay, but preferences vary by market and purchase. Offering the right mix of payment methods can reduce checkout friction and help more shoppers complete their purchases.

The Stripe module for PrestaShop supports 40+ payment methods, including cards, digital wallets, local options such as iDEAL and Bancontact, and eligible buy now, pay later (BNPL) options such as Klarna, Alma, and Afterpay/Clearpay.*

BNPL can be especially valuable during the holidays, when shoppers may be managing multiple or higher-value purchases. Customers can pay in installments while merchants are paid upfront. Stripe data shows BNPL can increase conversion by up to 10%, generate 66% of its volume from net-new sales, and increase revenue by up to 14%. For merchants, this means BNPL does more than shift purchases from one payment method to another—it can help turn shoppers who might not otherwise buy into paying customers.

Review your customer and sales data to identify the payment methods that matter most in each market. Confirm that those options are enabled, clearly presented, and working before Black Friday.

3. Test the checkout on mobile devices

A checkout that appears clear on a large screen can feel very different on a phone. Test the full experience on real mobile devices rather than treating mobile as a smaller version of desktop.

Check the following:

• Is important information readable without zooming?
• Are buttons easy to find and tap?
• Are payment options displayed clearly?
• Are form fields easy to complete?
• Do keyboards and autofill work as expected?
• Are error messages visible and useful?
• Can customers recover easily after an input or payment error?

Keep mobile forms short, support autofill, use clear error messages, and test the checkout on real devices and screen sizes.

Test across more than one device and screen size where possible. The goal is not to redesign the checkout for its own sake. The goal is to make the route from cart to completed payment clear and usable under real shopping conditions.

4. Review the experience for returning customers

Black Friday can bring previous customers back to your store. Requiring returning customers to re-enter the same details can add friction at the final stage of their purchase. Review how much information recognized or logged-in shoppers need to provide and whether there are opportunities to simplify the experience.

Link, Stripe’s digital wallet, allows eligible customers to use saved payment and shipping information for a faster checkout experience across participating businesses. More than 200 million people use Link, so eligible returning customers may already have their information saved.

Stripe also reports that businesses with a large repeat-customer base have seen an average 14% increase in returning-user conversion with Link. Results vary, but the finding illustrates the value of reducing repetitive data entry for shoppers who are ready to buy.

5. Turn your findings into a Black Friday action plan

Testing is most useful when each finding has an owner and a clear next step.

Bring together the people responsible for your PrestaShop store, marketing campaigns, operations, and payments. Make sure the plan follows the customer through checkout—not only to the product page or cart.

Before Black Friday, agree on:

• Which checkout issues must be addressed
• Which payment methods should be enabled or reviewed
• Who owns mobile and returning-customer testing
• How payment performance will be monitored
• How the team will respond if customers encounter problems
• Which measures will define success

Create a prioritized list rather than trying to change everything at once. Address issues that could prevent customers from completing purchases first, then focus on improvements that can reduce friction.

* Payment-method availability varies by merchant eligibility, customer location, currency, transaction, and the current capabilities of the Stripe module for PrestaShop.