News

Credit card, prepaid spending up in December

January 13, 2014

Payments processor First Data Corp. has released its First Data SpendTrend analysis for the period of Dec. 3–30, 2013, as compared with Dec. 4–31, 2012. Year-over-year, spending via credit card and prepaid card rose 7.8 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.

Dollar volume growth of 6.1 percent marked a significant spike compared with November's growth of 4.4. Signature debit was up 4.0 percent, while PIN debit grew by 4.3 percent. Even the decline of check use slowed to rate of -2.1 percent for the month.

Retail spending growth of 3.1 percent jumped from November growth of 1.3 percent. Average ticket growth of 0.8 percent improved considerably over the previous month's decline of -0.3 percent; retail average tickets marked a comeback with growth of 1.2 percent compared with 0.6 percent last month. 

"Spending growth was strong in December as shoppers were more confident and enjoyed stronger income growth compared with 2012, which encouraged consumers to open up their wallets this holiday season," said Krish Mantripragada, SVP of information and analytics solutions at First Data. "... [s]pending growth on credit cards hit a four-month high in December as consumers increasingly turned to credit to fund discretionary holiday purchases."

Read more about trends and statistics.