Retail electronic card spending slows

The seasonally adjusted value of core retail electronic card transactions (which excludes the motor vehicle-related industries) was down 0.6 percent in January 2008, Statistics New Zealand said today.

Growth in thetrend for the core retail series has noticeably eased since August 2007.

The value of seasonally adjusted card transactions for the total retail series (which includes the motorvehicle-related industries) was up 0.3 percent in January 2008 compared with December 2007.

The motorvehicle-related industries grew strongly in each of the three months from September to November 2007,and to a lesser extent in December 2007.

Fuel price rises were a likely contributor to this increase.In January 2008, there were 83 million electronic card transactions totalling $4.6 billion.

When adjusted forseasonal fluctuations, this represents a 0.6 percent increase in the value of total card spending comparedwith December 2007.

The Electronic Card Transaction series measures the number and value of debit, credit and charge cardtransactions with New Zealand-based merchants.

It is a census of all card transactions processed withinNew Zealand.

Transactions by overseas card-holders in New Zealand are included; transactions by NewZealand card-holders overseas are excluded.

The data is released as an experimental series and Statistics NZ acknowledges the cooperation of theprivate sector in providing the data for publication