UK’s Amazon Prime Day sales up just 1.3% despite inflation, BNPL surges

We’ve already heard about how well Amazon Prime Day went in the US. As for the UK, sales rose to a record level with British shoppers spending £581 million on the first day of the shopping fest, Adobe Analytics has said.

But that was a rise of only 1.3% compared to 2022, despite inflation being close to double digits in Britain. It’s perhaps no surprise that growth was fairly anaemic given how cautious UK shoppers have been in recent periods.

That said, it was still the UK’s biggest online shopping day so far this year. And for the full two days of the event, Adobe is forecasting sales of £1.2 billion in total, almost double the regular spending levels at this time of year.

What was particularly interesting about this year’s UK spend was the big jump (20%) in consumers using BNPL services. Being able to buy goods and pay them off interest-free over several months is proving extremely popular, and of that £581 million figure, £89.5 million was spent with BNPL as a payment method. It meant that delayed payment was used for one in every eight — or 13% of — orders. 

While spending rose in the UK, the figure British consumers splashed out was still well below that of the US where spending rose 6% to $6.4 billion.

Anecdotally, it seems that categories such as electronics and clothing were popular.