Holiday Discounts are the Gift that Keeps Giving

Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – officially kicks off the holiday shopping season, and is widely seen as the best opportunity for consumers to snag the lowest prices of the year. This year, combined data from Square, Cash App, and Afterpay saw 185 million transactions globally over the 2025 Black Friday weekend, with double-digit growth online and in store. To build on those results, we turn to Square data to understand how Black Friday fits into the larger holiday discount season in the US.

Tl;dr: Black Friday is only the beginning – deals and discounting continue throughout the holiday shopping season.

According to the 2024 numbers from Square, discounts spike the week of Black Friday and continue to soar above the weekly average until Christmas, when retailers rest and gifts are unwrapped. The same trend has continued so far this year: the week of Black Friday saw discounted transactions jump 11% from the Q4 average, with the following week up 6%. And rest assured, the discounts are just as good, averaging at around 28% off each week throughout the season, both this year and last.

Even Black Friday-specific discounts have extended far beyond the Friday itself and the weekend as a whole. Our data shows that the number of distinct days per year with at least 1,000 “Black Friday” discounts applied has grown considerably, from just 3 days in 2015 and 2016 to a peak of 47 days in 2023. As of December 11th, 2025, there have already been 25 days this year that have met the 1K threshold. At this point, “Black Friday” is something of a misnomer — the deals span weeks, not a single day.

So if you missed Black Friday, more deals await. And you won’t be alone: overall transaction volume has historically climbed after Black Friday, and the same pattern is emerging this year, with total sales up 20% the subsequent week.