Spending this Christmas is up on last year. FILE
Yesterday was the highest ever spending day recorded through the Paymark network with a whopping $255 million spent across the country - up 8.8 per cent on the same day last year.
Bay of Plenty shoppers spent $17.8 million yesterday alone - up 9.4 per cent from the same day
last year.
Nationally, the highest ever peak transaction rate of 156 per second was recorded at 12.35pm today. This compares with 148 transactions per second in 2013.
Paymark's Head of Customer Relations Mark Spicer said the figures indicated that more people were leaving Christmas shopping until the last minute.
"To give some sense of the change in the last few days, spending this Tuesday was up 45.1 per cent on last Tuesday. In terms of annual growth, spending at supermarkets and other food stores yesterday was up 12.7 per cent on the same day last year."
Consumers remained focused on the home yesterday with strong spending seen in furniture and floor covering stores. This particular sector registered a 19.9 per cent increase on last year, whilst hardware was up 7.7 per cent on the same day last year.
Elsewhere the pattern remains mixed with spending at book and video stores up 9.8 per cent while clothing, apparel and jewellery spending was up a modest 2.6 per cent.
The table below shows regional spending figures for yesterday, December 23rd:
