Today In Data: Holiday Weekend Sales And SMB Lending

With the holiday shopping season comes a lot of other factors: purchases made, money spent, items gathered and bills paid off. The Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday sales officially kickoff the holiday spending bonanza, and this year did not disappoint.

Today in PYMNTS data, Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales reached new highs, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the Asia-Pacific region are looking for alternative lending, vintage-inspired women’s clothing line ModCloth ran a Black Friday social media campaign to encourage charitable giving, SMBs are doing their best to stay out of debt and payment cards are up in Singapore.

Here are the numbers:

$7.9 billion | Estimated consumer spending between Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales. At its peak, holiday shoppers were spending approximately $1 million per minute online to soak up big deals.

$3 billion | Amount that Amazon Lending has lent to SMBs since the program’s launch in 2011, with borrowers primarily from the U.S., U.K. and Japan.

$4,500 | Prize to be awarded to one ModCloth social media contest winner for his or her contributions to humanity. The contest encouraged users to nominate someone who goes above and beyond by posting a picture or video on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #BlackFridayBreakup.

70 percent | Percentage of small business owners who say they pay the full balance of their credit cards every month, with 20 percent reporting they pay more than the minimum payment, suggesting SMBs are not willing to bury themselves in credit card debt, according to a recent Reliant report.

60 percent | Portion of Singapore’s national spend done through payment cards. As an added fun fact, the average Singaporean citizen has between two and six payment cards in his or her wallet.