Splitit’s Black Friday Figures Show Value in Installment-Based Mobile Payments

If you’re puzzling over why you’re hearing about Black Friday with Christmas now just days away, there’s a good reason. Our friends out at Splitit tipped us off about their run of luck with Black Friday sales, and it proved one point clearly: the option of short-term interest-free payment plans is drawing customer interest.

The word from Splitit notes that it was the first time the company had seen merchant sales of over $1 million, and that was amid strong growth throughout the world, with the US contributing particularly heavily to the total. In fact, recent updates suggested that the total take for the four-day weekend cleared right around $3 million total; Cyber Monday sales represented $1 million by themselves.

Splitit’s offering was particularly welcome in the housewares category, along with jewelry and electronics as well as “luxury accessories.” The average order value for the four day period was $820, up substantially over last year’s figure of $644.

Helping drive such a move is an array of new partnerships, mainly with lesser-known retail brands. This includes North American luxury massage chair retailer Slabway, Australian electronics retailer Dick Smith, UK costume jeweler Buckley London and several others.

Granted, Splitit’s numbers are really only impressive to Splitit; a Forbes report noted that Black Friday saw $7.2 billion in sales just for digital sales in the United States. Global digital sales were around $20 billion by Salesforce’s reckoning. Splitit’s $3 million for the entire weekend is therefore not so much a drop in the bucket as a drop in the Shedd Aquarium. I can’t help but wonder, however, what kind of sales Splitit could realize if it were hooked up to, say, Target or Best Buy or even just JCPenney.

Splitit’s sales are making huge inroads in moderately-priced consumer goods. For those who have their eye on a foosball table or patio furniture or even an above-ground pool for next summer, a service like Splitit could be a welcome addition, making these slightly higher-end pieces a bit more accessible to the everyday joe or jane. If Splitit wants to see real success, it’s going to need to branch out and get some bigger names under its belt.