Christmas spending surpasses last year, reaching $8.6 billion

Tuesday, 24 December 2019

Christmas spending this year is expected to tick over $8.6 billion with a record-breaking 199 transactions per second on Christmas Eve, according to Paymark.

The running pre-Christmas spend at $8.6b, since November 13, has already surpassed the total for last Christmas. Paymark's network processes Eftpso transactions for more than 70 per cent of New Zealand's retailers.

At the busiest time of day on Christmas Eve, Paymark handled more than 679,000 transactions an hour. ​ 

​Paymark reached a new daily peak last Friday of $297.5 million and expected Christmas Eve shopping to come very close.

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Paymark spokesman Paul Brislen said Christmas Eve spending would likely not surpass Friday because of the shorter shopping hours.

Retail NZ chief executive Greg Harford said 2019 had been a 'slow but steady' year of growth for New Zealand retailers as they competed with international giants.

Harford said spending throughout the year had been low but picked up after Black Friday sales.

As retailers made their Christmas stock orders well ahead of time, the pressure was on to get rid of stock.

'The pressure is on the retail market on having a number of pre-Christmas sales. Many have already kicked off Boxing Day sales,' Harford said.

Retail expert Chris Wilkinson of First Retail Group said people appeared to be doing their shopping earlier and thinking harder about what they buy, he said.

'We believe there's going to be a much stronger focus on durability of products, resilience, robustness.

'At the moment we've got this wave going on around fast fashion, but we've already seen the driver for [sustainability] around packaging, and that will only get stronger and stronger in the next 12 months.'