KEY POINTS:
Easter Thursday was the busiest shopping day of the year, says eftpos network company Paymark.
Transactions on the Paymark network grew by 10 per cent in March to $3.4 billion.
Paymark said it processed about three-quarters of all credit, debit and online transactions of which two-thirds were electronic.
Chief executive Simon Tong said the growth rate was a slight drop from that of recent months but was still above the average for last year.
"It also appears that Easter is attracting more spending than before."
Easter - counted from Thursday to Monday - was up 9.4 per cent on last year at more than $452 million.
"The impact of the public holidays and limited trading can also be seen, with Easter Thursday delivering almost three times the total spending of Good Friday."
Easter Thursday was up 7.8 per cent at $149.8 million, making it the busiest day of the year to date.
Tong said: "You could argue that what we see is an increase in spending but also an increase in transaction volumes as people move away from other more traditional forms of payment."
BNZ senior markets economist Craig Ebert said the Paymark data would not swing a decision on monetary policy.
"But they do underscore the momentum in consumer spending that we've seen in almost every other indicator you care to mention.
"Buoyant consumer spending's fine when you've got room for it but at the moment there just isn't the room ... so it's all spilling over into imports and inflation and a lot of imbalances are starting to get worse now."
BNZ was calling a 60 per cent chance of the Reserve Bank raising the official cash rate to 7.75 per cent this week.
Paymark's data shows Hawkes Bay registering the largest rise in electronic transactions in March, up 13 per cent to $95.1 million.
The Auckland/Northland region topped the list at $1.3 billion followed by Canterbury on $398.4 million and Wellington with $354.1 million.
The total number of transactions in March was up 10.8 per cent on the same month last year at more than 62.5 million, the fastest volume growth rate since mid-2005.
Paymark network
March this year compared with last year:
* $3.4 billion of total transactions - up 10 per cent.
* $1.3 billion in Auckland/Northland - up 10.1 per cent.
* $149.8 million on Easter Thursday - up 7.8 per cent.
