Black Friday and Cyber Monday continued to set new records for payment providers, both cross-border and domestically, while AI also had a greater impact. Ecommerce giant Shopify reported that merchants using its platform collectively hit a record $14.6bn in sales across the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, representing a 27% increase compared to the same four-day period last year and up 24% on a constant currency basis.
Over 81 million customers bought products from Shopify brands over the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, spending $114.70 on average – a 6% increase YoY. Looking at this figure alongside Shopify’s reported worldwide sales total, it appears that Shopify merchants saw more than 127 million orders across the four days. The ecommerce platform said that it saw sales peak at 12:01pm EST on Black Friday, when sales reached $5.1m per minute.
Notably, 16% of orders were cross-border in 2025, the same as in 2024. This remains below the peak cross-border share of 19% in 2019, although that was a share of more than 92 million fewer orders than 2025. This year, Shopify brands surpassed 20 million cross-border orders for the first time, boasting a 20% YoY increase (to 20.4 million) – in line with the overall total number of orders.
Payment processor Stripe, which serves Shopify alongside other ecommerce brands, released cross-border transaction data from Black Friday to the end of Cyber Monday for the second time. It saw cross-border transaction volume rise 37% YoY to $4.4bn. This equates to an 11% share of the total transaction volume – an increase of 68 bps YoY. Stripe also shared the top currency volumes over the four-day period, namely US dollars, euros, British pounds, Australian dollars and Canadian dollars.
Shoppers in the US also reportedly spent $11.8bn online on Black Friday – up 9% YoY – followed by a 7% increase in spending on Cyber Monday to $14.25bn, according to Adobe Analytics. This spending saw sales increase 8% YoY to $44.2bn for the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.
AI also left its mark on the holiday shopping season in 2025, with Adobe Analytics detailing that AI traffic to US retail sites increased 670% YoY on Cyber Monday alone, as consumers used generative chat services and browsers to research products and find the best deals. For the first time, Stripe measured how developers used LLMs and AI agents to interact with its Stripe API, finding that the largest proportion of requests were related to updating product and pricing details (41%).
It’s clear that order and transaction volumes set records across the latest holiday sales period, despite predictions that spending would decrease due to higher costs and more financial constraints. With AI driving significantly more traffic than last year, it appears that its impact will continue to grow, especially as AI agents with more capabilities begin to see more use; potentially driving further increases next year.
