Christmas Record Spending Reported

February 17, 2006

The UK clearance centre APACS has reported that British consumers spent record amounts over Christmas using their.

Spending using cash and cheques continued to fall, from 35% to 33% of all purchases made during 2004.
APACS have reported that spending using debit cards rose by over 15% but credit card spend only rose by 0.9% during the same period.

Overall purchases using plastic rose by 7.9% to a total of over 630 million during the year.
It is reckoned that the introduction of Chip and Pin has had an effect on the use of and may have resulted in less credit card purchases.

Many retailers over the Christmas period decided to start using Chip and Pin before the February 14th official start date.

Sandra Quinn from APACS said,” We spent a record amount this December on our plastic cards, and we are seeing an ongoing trend of paying by debit rather than – perhaps reflecting that we've become a nation that wants to keep a tighter reign on our finances.”