Millions of last-minute Christmas purchases break NZ record

Saturday, 24 December 2016

A last-minute spending spree kept retailers busy with a record number of transactions made on Christmas Eve.

The New Zealand record was smashed, according to figures from eftpos company Paymark, which showed transactions were up to 171 per second on Saturday, up from the 157 transactions per second recorded on Christmas Eve last year.

The busiest hour for shoppers was 12pm - 1pm when 543,000 transactions were put through.

Christmas Eve was traditionally the busiest spending day, with an estimated 5 million transactions made across the day.

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However this year's record was set on Friday.

And it wasn't just the last two days, December 21 and 22 were both above five million transactions.

Paymark's figures showed Kiwis were on track for a big spend, with more than $2.6 billion through its network in the first two weeks of December, up 6.1 per cent from last year.