PayPal: Nearly 1/3 of Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping was done on mobile

With the official start of the holiday shopping season behind us, the time has come to see what damage we have done to our checkbooks. Many in the commerce space have already come out with their own analysis, but today it’s PayPal’s turn to weigh in. PayPal confirms that mobile shopping isn’t a fad and reports that it has seen wider mobile usage during this Thanksgiving holiday than before. In fact, approximately one-third of its transactions were done on a mobile device.

The online payment processing platform surveyed 192 million active customer accounts and 15 million active merchant accounts to pull together its data and found that the total payment volume (TPV) per second on Thanksgiving was $10,781, followed by $15,507 the day after. Interestingly, the biggest sales volume was not on Black Friday ( $53,500), but on Thanksgiving itself ($75,849).

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The company makes a big deal of the fact that mobile usage on Black Friday surpassed usage on Cyber Monday last year, but this isn’t exactly a surprise, as the latter often involves people in front of a computer, while the former is typically a more on-the-go shopping experience.

This trend toward mobile usage on Black Friday is reflected in other reports, including those from Adobe, which claimed that mobile purchases helped contribute more than $1 billion in revenue on Black Friday.

One possible reason that mobile plays such an important part in shopping during the Thanksgiving holiday is that people want to get a good deal and can’t wait until the brick-and-mortar retail stores actually open. Of course, if you’re in a physical store amidst the madness that is Black Friday, it can be difficult to find the thing you’re looking for. You may also want to see if it’s cheaper elsewhere, say on Amazon, eBay, or at another competitor. So instead of fighting with your fellow humans over the latest toy, you could opt to take out that smartphone and simply place the order and move on with your day.

PayPal didn’t disclose the exact total payment volume this year, only sharing vague percentages.

However, the notion of individual shopping “holidays” is no longer a thing, as the buying season basically commences when you sit down for that turkey-centric meal with your family.

How Cyber Monday will fare remains to be seen — it was the company’s biggest online shopping day in history last year. PayPal is expected to release statistics about its performance later this week.