Spending with cards up 0.3% in December, following 2 flat months

Overall spending with electronic cards rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in December from the previous month, following two flat months in October and November, figures released by Statistics New Zealand show. The value of retail transactions using electronic cards rose a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in December from November. The rise in the value of retail transactions since July 2009 has been led by increases in spending on fuel, Stats NZ said. Not including fuel and vehicle related industries, core retail spending with cards rose 0.4% during December, up from 0.3% in November. Actual figures show the value of core retail transactions using electronic cards was NZ$4.2 billion in December 2009, up 3.6% from December 2008. Overall spending with cards rose 4.9% from the year before, to NZ$5.9 billion. The number of overall transactions with cards during December rose 6.6% from December 2008 to 106 million. Although this was up from 4.1% annual growth in December 2008, it was still down from an average growth of 8.3% between December 2005 and 2007. The average transaction value in December for overall card spending was $55.82, the lowest for a December month since the series began in 2004. It was up from NZ$52.67 in November. Here is the release from Stats NZ:

After adjusting for seasonal effects, the value of retail electronic card transactions increased 0.7 percent in December 2009, Statistics New Zealand said today. Automotive fuel retailing has been the main contributor to increases in this series since July 2009. Core retail (which excludes the motor vehicle-related industries) also increased in December 2009, by 0.4 percent. This increase was driven by the consumables industry (which includes food, liquor, and chemist retailing). When the non-retail industries are included, the total value of transactions was up by a lesser 0.3 percent, following the previous flat result (up just 0.1 percent) in November 2009. The non-retail industries (which include services such as travel and health, and wholesaling) were down 1.4 percent in December 2009. Trends for the value of transactions in the total, retail, and core retail series have all been increasing since January 2009. Latest figures indicate that the growth rate for the retail series has picked up since August 2009, while the growth rate for the total series appears to have eased since then. For the core retail series, the trend has been comparatively flat in recent months, up 1.0 percent since June 2009. Credit card use accounted for 44.6 percent of total transactions in the December 2009 quarter, an increase on the two previous quarters. This follows a general decline since the March 2008 quarter when the proportion was 47.7 percent. The actual value of transactions in core retail was $4.2 billion, up 3.6 percent from December 2008.