Prime Day 2025 is seeing a shift from impulse electronics to practical essentials, signaling consumers are buying smarter. According to early reports, spending at the start of Prime Day Tuesday (July 8) was down 14%. PYMNTS Intelligence data reveal spending may have dropped not due to a lack of interest in the event, but because of tighter budgets and rising skepticism over perceived value. Flash deals on electronics, once the hallmark of Prime Day, underperformed per Tuesday sales data, while essentials like home goods, pet care, and household appliances fared better. It’s a shift from impulse to pragmatism. Prime Day’s spending contexts are also a reflection of subtle but seismic changes in how consumers pay. The old model — credit card plus shipping address — is fading. Instead, new habits are being formed around wallets, embedded finance and more payments innovations. BNPL orders for Amazon’s Prime Day, for example, were up 13.6% year over year for Tuesday’s shopping event. Amazon Prime Day 2025 was still a massive success by any traditional measure. But beneath the surface, a critical shift is underway, powered by AI innovation, payments optimization and changing consumer behavior. Adobe said that during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event, it expects the amount of traffic to all U.S. retailers that comes from generative AI chat services and browsers to leap 3,200% year over year.