New Year Retail Spending Continues Strong Pre-Christmas Growth Pattern

End-of-year sales and New Year’s Eve celebrations continued to motivate Kiwi shoppers to spend up at core retailers in the final week of 2021 and the first days of 2022, lifting spending for the period above levels seen in the past two years.

Spending through core retail merchants (excluding hospitality) in Worldline NZ’s payments network reached $696m over the seven-day period ending Tuesday, 4 January, following the traditional New Year’s sales. This is up 7% on the same seven days recorded 12 months earlier and up 13% on the pre-Covid levels of 2019/20.

Spending on New Year’s Eve (31 December) specifically in 2021 through this core retail merchant group was $140m nationally, up 9% on New Year’s Eve in 2020.

This New Year’s Eve spend included $16m processed through Liquor retailing merchants (excluding liquor spending through supermarkets), which was up 13% on 2020.

Overall, spending at Liquor merchants on New Year’s Eve 2021 was higher than 2020 across all Worldline NZ-defined regions, except Gisborne and West Coast.

As was reported by Worldline NZ the day after Boxing Day, spending at core retail merchants nationwide in the critical pre-Christmas period of 2021 was up 6.9% on 2020 – a new record for this merchant group within Worldline NZ’s payments network.

The final week of spending for 2021 provided a strong end to a year that was notable for lockdowns and travel restrictions across borders around New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland.

Across the nation, annual spending growth was highest in Taranaki (+17%) and lowest in Gisborne (-3%). Noticeably spending in Gisborne over these seven days, which included the New Year’s Eve long weekend, was also below that of 2019/20 (-3%). Elsewhere, spending was above 2019/20 levels, although it should be noted that Northland figures have not been separated from Auckland in this data. (Auckland and Northland began operating at different settings on the Traffic Light system under the new COVID-19 Protection Framework as of 30 December 2021.)

Figure 2: All Cards NZ annual underlying* spending growth through Worldline in 7 days ending 4 January for regional core retail excluding hospitality merchants (* Underlying excludes large clients moving to or from Worldline)

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