New Zealanders spent about $4.6 billion on their debit and credit cards in December, up about 3.4 percent from the same month of 2010, which bodes well for 2012, says Paymark.
Gains were led by a 9.2 percent increase in discretionary spending, including clothing and footwear and growth in the building and home improvements sector, up 5 percent for the month, the strongest growth recorded last year, said Paymark, which processes 75 percent of the nation’s electronic transactions.
“2011 was a tough year for retailers, with all kinds of local and global factors affecting business – it is encouraging to see a bit of positivity with higher discretionary spending in the latter part of the year,” said Ben Robinson, a Paymark spokesman.
“Signs of more discretionary spending bode well for the future even if the trend is patchy across sectors and across regions at present.”
Spending growth was strongest in Palmerston North, up 7.7 percent, followed by South Canterbury on 6.5 percent, while weak annual growth rates were recorded in Canterbury on -0.9 percent and Marlborough on -0.8 percent. Debit cards remained the dominate payment type in 2011, with 701 million transactions despite the overall growth rate slowing to 3.6 percent.
Credit card’s surpassed debit card usage in December accelerating 0.7 percent from 0.2 percent in the same month of 2010.
7 Comments
Ha ha, classic! I watched that movie again the other day, had forgotten how good it is.
Anyhoo, I've just come back from Melbourne and have decided that we are being comprehensively ripped over here in NZ, so it's no wonder Xmas spending was up. We got reamed at the shops, is why.
I looked at big TV's in Melbourne (coz that is what men do) and drooled over Samsungs latest 64" monster. Interestingly, I had been drooling over exactly the same TV here in NZ - JB HiFi is selling them here for about $13 under NZ$5K.
In Melbourne, JB HiFi are selling exactly the same thing for AU$2,750. Even allowing for the currency difference, that's a massive difference considering it's the same store!
So..... a good 4 weeks? Yeah, great. We spent 4 weeks spending more than we needed to on crap we don't need.
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