---
title: "Peak season readiness"
description: "Learn what Adyen does and what you can do to be ready for the busiest period in the year."
url: "https://docs.adyen.com/industries/peak-season"
source_url: "https://docs.adyen.com/industries/peak-season.md"
canonical: "https://docs.adyen.com/industries/peak-season"
last_modified: "2025-10-22T09:08:00+02:00"
language: "en"
---

# Peak season readiness

Learn what Adyen does and what you can do to be ready for the busiest period in the year.

[View source](/industries/peak-season.md)

![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/peak-season-2024-cta-illustration.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)

Peak season is a critical period when businesses experience the highest volume of sales. For retail and ecommerce, that is typically from late October through early January. Other industries can have other or additional peak periods, like the summer holidays.

This part of the documentation provides information about what you can do to prepare for peak season spikes in sales. Most of the information applies to any peak period.

## Adyen's operational readiness

Especially in the months before peak season, we often get questions like:

* How many transactions per second (TPS) can your system handle?
* How does Adyen prepare for peak season load?
* How does Adyen ensure minimal disruption to the customer?

Our system is designed to handle large spikes in the number of transactions. Our [active/active, stateless architecture](#architecture) allows us to distribute transactions across a pool of highly available resources. The utilization rate of those resources is low, generally less than 30%, which means there is plenty of capacity to handle large increases in volume.

Adyen does not have maintenance windows with scheduled payment processing downtime. Releases, patches and upgrades are continuously applied without interruption of service to the payment functions.

We periodically load test this system with merchants who hold transactions and then release the transactions in bulk.

Peak season preparation is an ongoing project that we work on throughout the year. We are constantly analyzing our capabilities, adding additional resources, and so on. However, during the typical retail and ecommerce peak season we have a [modified release schedule](#modified-release-schedule) and additional support hours.

### Service-Oriented Architecture

All components, where possible, are stateless, meaning that no data is stored within a session on a particular piece of hardware. This ensures that in the event that components need to be swapped out and replaced or extra components need to be added, no data is lost and transaction processing can continue without impact. This setup is replicated in all the Adyen data centers to ensure maximum availability.

With load balancers in front of every data center, transactions can be equally processed through any available data center. In the event that a data center is unavailable, these load balancers also manage the failover to the other data centers. Again, due to the fact that the service is stateless, payment processing is not interrupted at any point.

### Modified release schedule

We do not want to risk introducing bugs or performance regressions in production during the critical peak season. We therefore freeze our code deployment around the following peak season days:

* Singles Day
* Black Friday
* Cyber Monday
* Giving Tuesday
* Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day
* New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

During code freezes we only allow new code deployments if it is a critical bug fix that went through code review by multiple senior engineers, and was approved by our operational leads. In this way, we prevent changes to your workflows.

## What you can do

To get the most benefit out of the spike in sales during peak season, there are several actions you can take. For example:

* You can optimize conversion rates, authorization rates, and costs, for example, by modifying settings related to risk or payment routing, or by adding features to your integration like local payment methods or accepting in-person payments offline when your network is down.

* You should make sure that your team keeps an eye on the performance of your integration, and knows what to do and how to contact Adyen in case of an issue with the payment processing.

* A spike in sales also means a spike in refunds and disputes. Therefore, you should ensure that your refund reserve remains topped up to an adequate level, and that your team is trained in dispute handling.

Read the next pages for our recommendations about all the above actions and more. Note that some of the recommended actions to get ready for peak season, require time to implement. You should plan such actions well in advance so that you can properly test and fix any errors.

We do not recommend implementing new features and doing major upgrades right before peak season.

## Webinars and other resources

In addition to the documentation provided here, there are other resources you can consult. These resources typically provide a high-level overview, or have a more operational focus.

Check the following webinars:

* [Smarter optimization for your peak season](https://help.adyen.com/academy/webinars/peak-season#join-live).

* [Capture revenue from soccer's biggest stage](https://help.adyen.com/academy/webinars/international-soccer-tournament#join-live). This webinar discusses how to prepare for spikes in payments traffic.

* Preparing for peak season series:

  * Part 1, What reliability really looks like
  * Part 2, Convert shoppers with smarter journeys
  * Part 3, Efficiency that pays off\
    All these webinars are available from [The peak season playbook](https://help.adyen.com/guides/the-peak-season-playbook#turn-shoppers-into-customers).

Other resources:

* Blog [Three ways to prepare for peak season](https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/peak-season)
* [Peak season checklist](https://brand.adyen.com/share/9Ktvo95rCqokF3wmzdYx/assets/82928)

## Next steps

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/integration-help.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/status-and-help)

###### [Status updates and help](/industries/peak-season/status-and-help)

[Check the status of our payments platform, and know how to contact our Support Team.](/industries/peak-season/status-and-help)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/checkout.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/online-payments)

###### [Online payments](/industries/peak-season/online-payments)

[Use the right payment methods and check the health of your integration.](/industries/peak-season/online-payments)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/pos-good.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/in-person-payments)

###### [In-person payments](/industries/peak-season/in-person-payments)

[Order hardware in time, and use the right software version and features.](/industries/peak-season/in-person-payments)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/shopper-risk.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/risk-and-disputes)

###### [Risk and disputes](/industries/peak-season/risk-and-disputes)

[Optimize your risk and dispute management setup for peak season.](/industries/peak-season/risk-and-disputes)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/refund.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/refunds)

###### [Refunds and payouts](/industries/peak-season/refunds)

[Be ready for an increase in (omnichannel) refunds and desired changes in payout schedules.](/industries/peak-season/refunds)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/pay-by-link-plane.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/afp)

###### [Adyen for Platforms](/industries/peak-season/afp)

[Be aware of topics to address specifically on your platform or marketplace.](/industries/peak-season/afp)

[![](/user/pages/docs/industries/04.peak-season/hands-love.svg?decoding=auto\&fetchpriority=auto)](/industries/peak-season/giving)

###### [The Giving season](/industries/peak-season/giving)

[Facilitate donations with Adyen Giving.](/industries/peak-season/giving)
