December 9, 2025
Over Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM), sellers using ThriveCart saw strong checkout activity, with Stripe Connect+ outperforming older Stripe processors by 6.2%.
Across November 27 – December 3, ThriveCart vendors processed more than 200,000 transactions. Cyber Monday once again finished as the highest-performing day across the platform, continuing its trend as the peak moment for buyer activity.
Category performance trends
The Educational sector, like Advanced AI Courses, Money Management, Fashion Designing, and Travel Influencers Selling Travel Hacks Courses, dominated BFCM, contributing nearly a third of all volume. Management & Consulting, such as Cloud Architect Solutions, Brand Consulting, and Data Analytics Consulting, and Personal Development, including Public Speaking, Career Development Coaching, and Time Management Courses, followed, showing strong demand for expert-led and transformation-focused offerings.
Digital Goods, Software, Gaming, and Apps, such as Copywriting Services, also performed well, proving that instantly delivered products continue to convert efficiently during peak periods.
Smaller but consistent contributions from Business Services, Professional Services, Membership Organizations, and Photographic Studios highlight a steadily diversifying merchant base, with more service-driven and niche businesses using ThriveCart to capture high-intent buyers.
Checkout behavior trends
This year’s BFCM reinforced several clear patterns:
- Simple, uncluttered funnels outperformed complex setups
- Stripe drove most high-value and international purchases
- PayPal delivered a reliable mid-teens share
- Multiple order bumps performed best when tightly relevant
- Buyers gravitated toward fast, clean checkout experiences with minimal friction
Cards dominated purchasing overall, contributing 89% of gross volume, while BNPL options (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay) added around 3% of total volume.
A more global BFCM
International purchasing increased meaningfully, with Stripe absorbing most of the cross-border volume. Vendors reported smoother international conversions and broader geographic reach than in prior years.
Stripe Connect+ performance
Stripe Connect+ was the backbone of BFCM payments this year, and it consistently outperformed the legacy setup across the board.
That gap translated into thousands of additional approved purchases and an overall uplift of roughly 6.2% in real-world checkout performance. Peak activity was concentrated on December 1 between 17:00 – 21:00 UTC, when US and EU traffic overlapped.
Fraud prevention & disputes
Since launching in April 2025, Stripe Connect+ has maintained a dispute rate of just 0.19%, extremely low for digital commerce.
A major driver of this improvement is the platform-wide availability of Stripe’s Premium Radar (Radar for Fraud Teams), which delivered:
- Stronger fraud detection using advanced ML
- Fewer false declines for legitimate buyers
- Platform-level rules tuned for accuracy across all merchants
- Automatic 3DS on high-risk transactions
- Fewer disputes and cleaner payment flows overall
Looking ahead
BFCM 2025 confirmed a clear shift toward clarity, speed, and frictionless payments. With Stripe Connect+ delivering higher success rates, lower disputes, and smoother international conversions, and creators winning with cleaner funnels, ThriveCart vendors are moving toward a more focused and more global commerce model heading into 2026.