Auckland card spend cools down

Paymark says spending growth in major centres such as Auckland and Wellington continued to come off the boil in December.

The Eftpos provider, which processes more than 75 per cent of the country's electronic card transactions, said that aside from that cooling, 2017 ended on a positive economic note.

About $5.9 billion was spent through Paymark's network in December, up 4.9 per cent on the same month in 2016.

Underlying spending was up 0.5 per cent on November, Paymark said when releasing the data yesterday.

“December was marked by strong growth early in the month, including 8.1 per cent annual underlying growth through Paymark in the first seven days, continuing on from the spending surge of late November.

“More moderate growth rates were recorded during the rest of the month, including 6.4 per cent annual growth on Boxing Day,” Paymark said.

The biggest day of the month was the Friday before Christmas, up 2.7 per cent on the peak of 2016.

Paymark said it again noticed a slowing of spending growth in major centres.

Spending was up 3.3 per cent in Auckland/Northland, 3.9 per cent in Wellington and 4.1 per cent in Canterbury.

That compared with growth in Marlborough of 18.6 per cent, of 10.5 per cent on the West Coast and 10.3 per cent in Wairarapa.

Spending through Paymark across 2017 totalled $60b — up 5.4 per cent on 2016. This was slightly below the 5.8 average annual growth of the past five years.