Holiday Card Spending Ramps up in Stores And on the Internet

The week ended Dec. 18 included three of the four heaviest spending days of the holiday shopping season so far, according to the latest report from Visa USA. Spending on Visa-branded cards totaled $5.2 billion on Dec. 16, ranking that day the busiest of the season. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, now ranks fourth, at $4.8 billion, Visa says. And yet higher volumes may be just around the corner. “As we quickly approach the holiday weekend, we expect that consumers will continue to shop in force,” said Wayne Best, in-house economist at Visa. “Based on previous years, we anticipate the strongest shopping days of the holiday season are yet to come and will likely occur during the latter part of this week.” Total Visa volume in the U.S. reached nearly $33 billion for the week, an increase of 14% from the same week in 2004. Transactions totaled almost 551 million, up 14.5%. Consumer debit traffic, in which Visa is now counting Interlink as well as check card payments, totaled $14.4 billion (up 20%) on 339.5 million transactions (up nearly 19%). Consumer credit card payments came to $15.7 billion (an 8% rise) on 191.6 million transactions (up almost 7%). Both e-commerce and quick-service continued to be fast-growing categories. Internet activity on Visa totaled $3.7 billion for the week, up 36%, on 45 million transactions, a 34% increase. Visa says Dec. 1 has so far been its busiest day on the Web this season, at $623.8 million, followed by Dec. 15, at $616 million. Fast-food restaurants generated $469 million in Visa volume last week, up 50% over the same week last year, on 40.6 million transactions, a 63% increase, yielding an average ticket of $11.56.