Christmas Shoppers Spend $750 Million In 3rd Week

Christmas Shoppers Spend $750 Million In Third Week Of December

Statement made by Darryl Roots, Paymark Spokesperson

It’s been the biggest week for December shopping in New Zealand with Christmas shoppers spending $750 million through the Paymark EFTPOS system. Based on Paymark figures our estimate is that the total market is up 3% on the same period last year.

The total Paymark spend the week before was $657 million so we’ve seen a significant increase in Christmas shopping spending this week. This is probably due to people rushing out to get those last minute Christmas gifts.

The tills are ringing and New Zealanders have given retailers an early Christmas. Yesterday 2.4 million transactions passed through the Paymark EFTPOS system and we expect Christmas Eve transaction levels to be even higher. Between 1pm and 2pm yesterday, the busiest shopping hour of the day, 237,000 transactions were made at an average of 3,900 transactions per minute.

The Christmas period is the busiest time of the year for retailers, so the Paymark Team are working around the clock to ensure glitch free processing takes place.

New Zealanders spent $2.01 billion on their credit and debit (EFTPOS) cards during December up to Christmas Eve through the Paymark EFTPOS system.

When looking regionally at the spending breakdown, there has been increases in spending in the following regions over the last week: Hawkes Bay (+10.5%), Wellington (+10.5%), Nelson (+19%), West Coast (+23%), Canterbury (+12.5%), South Canterbury (+13%), Otago (+17%) and Southland (+11%).

Approximately 80% of all electronic point of sale payment transactions throughout New Zealand are processed via the Paymark EFTPOS system providing an excellent indication of the level of activity in the marketplace.

Paymark Pulse Statistics for 15 to 21 December 2003:

SOURCE: Paymark Pulse
Name Transactions Value Increase on previous year

Auckland/Northland 4,922,930 298,369,320 8.01%
Waikato 906,177 48,708,084 6.09%
Bay of Plenty 860,892 47,608,892 7.55%
Gisborne 128,348 6,427,129 8.47%
Taranaki & Taupo 382,398 17,743,193 6.53%
Hawkes Bay 404,875 21,545,230 10.55%
Wanganui 146,673 6,747,306 -0.39%
Palmerston North 467,479 22,880,452 8.63%
Wairarapa 126,651 6,800,648 9.19%
Wellington 1,454,785 80,813,556 10.62%
Nelson 286,038 16,750,357 18.96%
Marlborough 163,662 9,558,899 8.21%
West Coast 91,905 5,383,262 23.44%
Canterbury 1,547,695 90,243,506 12.55%
South Canterbury 212,769 11,657,948 12.86%
Otago 673,598 39,039,091 17.17%
Southland 325,870 19,416,246 11.10%
Total 13,102,745 749,693,119 9.56%

Ends.

ETSL is currently processing transaction statistics for 22-24 December.

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