Black Friday 2025: Why Your POS System Needs Cellular Connectivity

The end of November means the start of winter, preparations for the new year, and – for some – chaotic hordes descending on shopping malls and big box stores to secure a bargain during Black Friday weekend. While the viral clips that emerge each year of in-store pandemonium show extreme cases, the weekend does see a noticeable surge in physical shopping across the globe – Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 saw 13 million more US shoppers than predicted by market experts.

Black Friday shopping traditionally commences the day after the US Thanksgiving; the original term was pejoratively coined by Philadelphia police to bemoan the increased crowding and unrest. Black Friday 2025 is on November 28.

Today, Black Friday (also known as White Friday, depending on where you are) is a misnomer – the event has outgrown its one-day origins to describe a cluster of days around late November where shoppers rush to secure cut-price gifts before the holiday season commences. In the US, Black Friday and the following Monday (known as Cyber Monday) are the two busiest shopping days of the year for both online and offline sales.

Globalization and the continued growth of online shopping and international shipping have made Black Friday a worldwide phenomenon, spreading far outside the US to become an event in its own right, untethered from a Thanksgiving or American context.

For retailers, the rising global popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a double-edged sword: while the period is often the most lucrative time of year, ensuring a smooth customer experience is a considerable challenge. As well as in-store security and additional queue management, ensuring the uninterrupted function of point-of-sale (POS) terminals is paramount to a successful shopping season.

Busy stores are great in theory – but without a POS strategy that can handle the associated network congestion during these peak hours, retailers can miss out on the potential benefits.

With a reliable, secure, and failproof wireless connection, physical stores can embrace the Black Friday crowds while delivering an optimal customer experience and ensuring constant in-store connectivity. Partners like 1GLOBAL deliver this through the latest developments in eSIM and Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

Black Friday connectivity challenges

Research by Mastercard indicated that Black Friday spending is growing year on year. Despite this potential increase in profits, the spike in foot traffic poses a challenge for store staff and IT departments. Increased customer numbers mean a greater strain on in-store connectivity networks, particularly in stores that deploy additional checkout staff and terminals during the sales.

This surging short-term demand can strain POS systems and cause network congestion and even downtime if not properly accounted for.

1. Network downtime

Network downtime is any period of time when transactions can’t be processed due to a network failure. Even brief outages can have a significant impact on revenue, customer experience, and brand reputation. In normal trading hours, downtime is a serious issue. In peak shopping seasons, it can be disastrous.

On a traditional wireless in-store connection, increased crowds and network outages share a proportional relationship: as the number of customers in a store grows, both the likelihood and severity of POS downtime increase.

2. Inflexible connectivity plans

Managing connectivity for brick-and-mortar establishments can be tricky. Retail is a seasonal industry, with fluctuating traffic across the year. For IT departments tied into long-term connectivity contracts, often from traditional mobile operators or wireless suppliers, this can create a reverse goldilocks effect, where companies face a choice between overpaying for excessive bandwidth during quieter periods or not having enough during seasonal spikes.

3. New payment methods

Customer behavior has also changed, with a sharp rise in online payment options like Tap to Pay and Buy Now, Pay Later placing additional strain on in-store wireless demands. Adapting connectivity budgets to meet these shifting demands, while ensuring unbroken online access for POS systems and customers, is key to a sustainable in-store checkout strategy.

In stores with a single network connection, the risk of outages is a constant concern. Cellular POS connectivity provides a reliable alternative, keeping terminals connected when primary networks slow or fail.

Cellular terminals are possible through IoT technology, which describes the ecosystem of electronic devices that communicate wirelessly. In retail, this covers everything from short-distance NFC connections between bank cards and card terminals to the long-distance remote distribution of eSIMs to stores around the globe.

Surviving Black Friday with 1GLOBAL

With the advent of wireless POS terminals like tablets and iPhones, retailers can adopt responsive and reliable connectivity plans from specialist wireless providers like 1GLOBAL.

1GLOBAL IoT POS is an eSIM-based retail service that ensures POS terminals remain constantly connected to a secure mobile network, even in the event of a signal outage.

• 1GLOBAL’s eSIM-based retail connectivity plans are continually tailored to provide exacting data needs, growing to match the client’s requirements.

• eSIM-based plans allow for easy setup of new POS systems – store staff can open a mobile POS terminal, download a 1GLOBAL eSIM, and start using it as a POS within minutes.

• 1GLOBAL IoT POS allows retailers to leverage eSIMs’ auto-switching capabilities to eliminate the risk of downtime from their POS systems.

While flexible POS systems avoid queue bottlenecks within the store, cellular connections eliminate network bottlenecks, keeping transactions flowing and ensuring as smooth a customer experience as possible. More revenue, less stress, and a smoother checkout experience for both staff and customers. An international IoT partner like 1GLOBAL ensures all devices worldwide have access to multiple mobile networks, "triple-locking" them against possible network outages.

The benefits here are twofold: the system avoids missed transactions, protecting revenue in the short term. Eliminating downtime also reduces customer wait times, reducing the risk of queue abandonments and improving customer satisfaction in the longer term.

Black Friday and short-term retail

Adaptability is a key asset of a wireless POS strategy. Not only does this allow retailers to extend their checkouts during busy periods, but it also enables them to explore new retail formats and seasonal possibilities over the Black Friday weekend and holiday season.

With a global IoT retail partner like 1GLOBAL, retailers can take advantage of the heightened footfall by operating short-term retail formats in targeted locations. Pop-ups, in-store booths, and new tactics like ‘store-within-a-store' setups allow brands to engage a wider customer base and maintain control over the pricing and display of their products, without the long-term commitment of leasing or buying a brick-and-mortar space.

Utilizing iOS-based POS systems like iPhones allows store staff to effortlessly assist customers and process transactions throughout the store, reducing crowding and the need for a specific checkout zone. Wireless systems have revolutionized the transaction process, enabling brands to experiment with new formats and develop immersive customer experiences that simultaneously drive revenue and brand awareness, particularly in new markets. This is only possible with a reliable and fast wireless POS connection.

These systems simultaneously solve a long-standing puzzle for short-term retail: hiring and training part-time staff in a very brief window of time. By utilizing mobile POS systems (mPOS), new team members can immediately get to grips with a familiar UX, reducing their training hours and boosting efficiency and staff satisfaction during trading hours.

International retail connectivity

For multinational retailers, the connectivity challenges Black Friday poses are mirrored year-round by local shopping events in other regions of the world.

A flexible cellular strategy allows international retailers to optimize their operations and leverage the opportunities of localized sales events, delivering optimized POS connectivity all year round.

• The worldwide 1GLOBAL network means a consistent level of connectivity across all stores in all countries of operation.

• One global network provides coverage in 190+ countries on a single contract, enabling rapid international expansion

• One single centralized platform facilitates simple management of all POS systems in all stores and provides in-depth analytics.

Beyond Black Friday 2025

The ways in which we shop are constantly changing. New payment methods, new in-store expectations, and global shifts in mobile technology and digitization are pushing the physical retail sector to continually adapt and innovate its in-store experience.

Maintaining a sustainable, scalable POS strategy requires constant innovation and adoption of new technologies.

Whether utilizing wireless POS systems for an established store or a temporary pop-up, cellular systems allow for manageable growth. For chains, this provides a real opportunity for data-driven decision-making across all stores.

As customer payment habits evolve, a responsive checkout process is the key to meeting new expectations and outpacing the competition. This is only possible with a platform that collates and presents real-time transaction data at the point of sale.

A centralized management platform

The winter sales season accounts for between 25 and 40% of total annual retail sales in the US.

A unified POS service can compile data from all POS terminals worldwide and create analytics that can be built on in the months to come, allowing brands to develop personalized shopping solutions for their customers and stand out in the crowded field of physical retail. A network of cellular POS systems, coupled with a simple online management tool like the 1GLOBAL management portal, provides retailers with an overview of all transactions and gleans unparalleled insights into each store.

An eSIM-based POS strategy further allows for real-time SIM distribution and recall – IT departments can instantly activate new iOS POS devices, anywhere in the world, at any time. This means instant, real-time response to fluctuating store traffic, easing the workload for on-site employees and reducing delays for holiday shoppers.

It's essential to prepare for the ongoing surge in mobile data usage and rising numbers of shoppers by augmenting the connectivity of physical POS terminals with a reliable, fast, and secure failover network. 1GLOBAL IoT provides a minimum of three mobile networks in every country of operation. If one signal fails, all devices will automatically reconnect to the strongest alternative network, keeping business flowing as usual, even during Black Friday rushes. Learn more about our IoT retail connectivity solutions, or contact our team to discuss using 1GLOBAL services with your business.