Christmas spending off to sluggish start

Not much money is flowing through the system at this stage. Photo / Dean Purcell

Christmas has got off to a slow start.

With Christmas Day just eight days away, the latest figures from Paymark show a relatively slow start to retail spending in the key Christmas selling season.

Eftpos figures from Paymark show that New Zealanders spent NZ$1.76 billion through its network in the first two weeks of December.

This is up just 1.7 per cent compared to the same fortnight in 2007.

Paymark has processed more than 33 million transactions during the month to date, which is up 6.7 per cent on last year.

Paymark processes more than three quarters of all in-store electronic transactions in New Zealand.

- INTEREST.CO.NZ