Kiwis Leave it to the Last Minute Once Again

The busiest hour of Christmas Eve shopping for 2010 has just passed and figures from Paymark show that Kiwis have left their shopping late again this year.

As is the case every year, the peak shopping hour was between 12pm and 1pm. During this time the Paymark network processed an average of 129 transactions per second, equating to 435,000 transactions in total for the hour.

In terms of value, shoppers have splashed out $120 million so far in their final Christmas Eve gift-buying blitz (as at 1pm) – half of this total was processed between 10am and 1pm.
With just a few hours of shopping to go, spending appears to be tracking similarly to the same day last year.

Yesterday’s shopping figures were also positive, with a total of $226 million dollars spent across the country through Paymark’s network.

Paymark CEO, Simon Tong, says that retailers will have welcomed the late rush, but that transactions will taper off in the last few shopping hours of the day.

“It’s positive to see that shoppers have come out in force today – the network has seen a lot of activity – we’re on par with last year but we can expect to see sales slowly dropping off from now as people swap the malls and shops for time with family and friends,” says Simon Tong.

ENDS

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