Samina Hussain-Letch
UK Executive Director, Square
An ecosystem of ecommerce tools drove sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, fuelling growth for small businesses. Learn how entrepreneurs are embracing AI to save time and boost success into 2025.
Over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, Square‘s internal survey found that sellers using Block’s ecosystem of commerce tools broke records with a 34% increase on transactions in the UK, from the Friday through to the Sunday, compared to last year — demonstrating consumer appetite for spending is on the rise.
According to the internal survey, the most popular shopping day was Sunday (1st December). Restaurant transactions over the weekend rose 27% for Square sellers, compared to last year. This is encouraging for small businesses in particular that are gearing up for what is likely to be a very busy festive season while preparing for the new year.
Business growth despite challenging landscape
We know it’s been a challenging year for businesses in the UK. The environment has been tough in the market, and this week, it was reported in the news that we are seeing the slowest new business rate in the UK since 2010. This is likely because the recent budget announcement was unfriendly for small businesses, amongst other external factors. While it is a tough climate, we are continuing to see a lot of growth from our own portfolio of sellers and hearing again and again about an appetite for growth.
While it is a tough climate, we
are continuing to see a lot of growth
from our own portfolio of sellers.
Embracing ecommerce and AI into 2025
We recently published our Moving Forward research report* with Clearpay and Small Business Britain on the state of female entrepreneurship. We found that 65% of female entrepreneurs are expecting their business to grow in 2025 and an impressive 55% of the women we asked say they’re using AI to help save time with tasks like marketing and web design, with many more planning to in the coming months and year.
Tech empowers sustainable sales management
One of our sellers, Perky Blenders, which was featured in our report, told us that integrating our technology is now saving her business up to one day a week in administration time. This time has allowed her to focus on growing other areas of her business, such as their core value of responsibility to the planet by operating in an increasingly eco-friendly and sustainable way. This is a great example of how we are encouraging female entrepreneurs and businesses more broadly to utilise technology to get time back, allowing them to focus on growth.
* Small Business Britain. Female Entrepreneurship: Moving Forward. 2024.
