Kiwis set new Christmas Eve spending record

Kiwis are setting new Christmas Eve spending records. Photo / File

Frenzied Kiwis have been scrambling to do last minute Christmas shopping at a record-breaking pace today.

The busiest 15 seconds in retail shopping in New Zealand came early this year, with the peak arriving at 11:45am rather than falling in the traditional 12.30-1pm period on Christmas Eve.

The 12-1pm hour today also accounted for more than half a million transactions (543,538 in total) making it the busiest hour of the day.

Last year, Christmas Eve peaked at 157 transactions per second. This year that figure too was eclipsed with 171 transactions per second being recorded at the tills.

However, today won't be the biggest shopping day of the year, with that honour falling to Friday December 23.

Paymark has seen three days in a row of transactions exceeding the five million mark (December 21-23), another first for the company.

While the final figures for today are yet to be counted it looks likely to end with more than five million transactions as well.

"The switch has held up well with no reports of problems on the network, which accounts for more than 75 per cent of the nation's EFTPOS terminals," a spokesman for Paymark said..

"The technology team at Paymark ensures the network is as resilient as possible to minimise downtime for retailers at this key time of the year.

"Even with record peaks such as the ones seen today, the network is still operating well below its maximum capacity."

Today's shopping frenzy by numbers...

*Peak hour with 543,538 transactions - 12 noon.

*Peak minute with 9,389 transactions at minute -12:20pm.

*Peak second with 171 transactions - 11:45:45.