Black Friday sales grew 7.9%

Atlanta Overall transactions on Black Friday showed a healthy growth of 7.9% over 2008, according to First Data Corp., a provider of e-commerce and payment processing. The company released on Wednesday its First Data SpendTrend transaction data from Black Friday 2009 compared with year.

Black Friday sales were in line with the overall transaction growth in October 2009, which was 8.2%. Same-store sales volume increased 4.8%, led by solid growth among value merchants.

“Black Friday was better than last year both in terms of transaction growth and total dollars spent at the point of sale,” said Silvio Tavares, senior VP investor relations and decision support at First Data. “However, there is reason to remain cautious as our analysis suggests consumers remain very value conscious and paid more often with their debit cards instead of credit cards.”

First Data also recently released its Holiday Gift Card Performance Report comparing gift-card sales for the week ending Nov. 29. The total dollar value of gift cards activated Friday grew 17.8% and the number of cards activated grew 9.8%.