In this expanded edition of the CardFlight Small Business Report, we report on last week's sales data, provide a month-end look back, and examine the rise of touch-free payment methods like contactless tap to pay, invoices, and more.
The CardFlight Small Business Report analyzes sales performance and emerging trends among small businesses in the United States.
The report has been featured in and/or cited by The Atlantic, Bloomberg TV, Business Insider, Digital Transactions, PaymentsJournal, PaymentsSource, and others. Sign up below to receive future report notifications right in your inbox.
Learn more about the report and our methodology.
First, we examine change in week-over-week small business performance by analyzing change in overall sales, number of transactions per business, and more.
Week-over-week sales at the small businesses in our sample fell by 4.9 % compared to the week of September 28 – October 4, 2020.
The transaction count metric represents the total number of transactions processed by the small businesses in our sample. Last week, transaction counts decreased by 0.3%.
This metric measures all businesses who processed at least one transaction in the preceding week. The number of active merchants decreased by 0.6% last week.
The average number of transactions per active merchant increased by 0.3% last week.
The payments industry has two broad categories for transactions based on where they occur.
The three ways US consumers typically use credit and debit cards for in-person transactions are:
We continue to see that overall growth in sales made via contactless payment methods are outpacing those made via EMV chip. While payments made via EMV chip are now up 22% over their pre-COVID baseline levels, contactless payment methods are up more than 202%.
For more about COVID's effect on low-contact ways to pay, view the special section of this week's expanded report.
In this section of the CardFlight Small Business Report, we take a closer look at small business performance by business category.
Sales at Food and Drink businesses decreased by 4.8% last week. Transaction counts decreased by 1.8% week-over-week.
Sales at the Retail businesses in our sample decreased by 15.8% week-over-week. Meanwhile, transaction counts increased by 1.2%.
Retail is the most volatile business category we track in this report. We'll continue to monitor change in sales in this category.
Sales at businesses in the Services category decreased by 3.9% last week. Meanwhile, transaction counts decreased by 1.4%.
Next, we take a look at the month-over-month changes to sales, transaction counts, and number of active merchants at US small businesses. This analysis is based on "whole month" comparisons, using March 2020 as the baseline month.
Sales at the small businesses in our sample ended the month of September 5.4% below August.
Transaction counts ended the month of August 0.1% below July.
The number of active small businesses in our sample ended the month of September 1.5% below August.
In this section of the report, we examine how the COVID-19 global pandemic changed how consumers pay small businesses for their goods and services. Learn more about the ways merchants accept touch-free payments with SwipeSimple.
First, we analyze the way customers of small businesses are changing how they pay for goods and services in-person.
The three ways US consumers typically use credit and debit cards for in-person transactions are:
The number of in-person transactions made via EMV chip cards are up almost 22% compared to the pre-COVID baseline week of March 2-8, 2020. Magnetic swipe payments are down 9.2%, and contactless tap transactions are up more than 202%.
Next, we analyze the way the customers of small businesses are changing how they pay for goods and services when not in-person.
We'll focus on the following ways small businesses accept payments with SwipeSimple:
Transactions made via invoices are up nearly 250% compared to the pre-COVID baseline week of March 2–8, 2020. Keyed entry transaction counts are up nearly 32% and card-on-file transactions are up 124%.
Although most small businesses use SwipeSimple to accept credit card payments, a small portion of the transactions we record are cash payments. In this section, we see how COVID-19 affected consumer preference for cash payments.
Payment made via cash decreased significantly throughout the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic but have since rebounded to nearly 16% above the baseline in September.
Thanks for reading this expanded edition of the CardFlight Small Business Report. Sign up for report notifications below to stay in the loop as we continue to explore changes in the realms of small business payment technology.
Do you have questions, feedback, or press inquiries? Contact us. You may also view past editions of the CardFlight Small Business Report.
The CardFlight Small Business Report is intended to provide insights into ongoing sales performance, trends, predictions, and unique analysis of US small businesses. The report has been featured in The Atlantic, Bloomberg TV, Business Insider, Digital Transactions, PaymentsJournal, PaymentsSource, and others.
The report is based on analysis of a representative sample of more than two million transactions processed by more than 65,000 small businesses who use SwipeSimple software (the signature product of CardFlight) to accept credit and debit card payments.
To create this report, we analyzed a representative sample of millions of transactions processed by:
The typical SwipeSimple merchant has one to ten employees and less than five locations or mobile service points. The average active merchant represented in this data set processes approximately $130,000 in credit/debit card payments annually. The merchants are a mix of professional and personal service providers, specialty retail establishments, and food and drink purveyors.
