Kiwis spend up big as pre-Christmas shopping rises

Spending in the lead-up to Christmas is expected to surpass last year's total today as Kiwis flock to retailers ahead of the big day.

Pre-Christmas spending – measured from November 13 – is at $8.317 billion, up 3.4 per cent on last year to date, according to Paymark, which processes about 70 per cent of the Eftpos market.

Last Friday was the biggest shopping day of the year, reaching $297.5 million through 5.1 million transactions, surpassing Easter Thursday ($263m) and Black Friday ($253m).

But Paymark spokesman Paul Brislen anticipates more big spending to come, with Christmas Eve expected to surpass last Friday.

"We expect to see Christmas Eve beat this as well, so you're looking at sort of a $300 million, at least, Christmas Eve looking at these figures."

Brislen said it can be a little hard to judge when Christmas Eve falls so close to the weekend – as it did last year, which resulted in Christmas Eve not being the busiest shopping day – but this year there was an extra day buffer.

"It should be returning to that normal Christmas spending cycle of Christmas Eve being the busiest day."

Brislen said they have seen a change in traditional shopping patterns in December.

"What we're seeing now is an interesting change off the back of Black Friday coming on as a retail event.

"Traditionally what would happen is during December week by week the sales would ramp up slowly till you got to the craziness of Christmas Eve which is the busiest shopping day of the year.

"[With Black Friday] we see a sudden spike at the end of November/beginning of December with the Black Friday weekend and then a quieter period for the first couple weeks of December and then back into it again as we get towards Christmas Eve.

"[Black Friday] is becoming a very big part of the spending pattern for Christmas."