Last minute shopping keeps tills busy

People leaving shopping until the last minute kept tills busy on Christmas Eve.

The busiest hour of Christmas Eve shopping for 2010 passed between noon and 1pm and during that time the Paymark network processed an average of 129 transactions per second, equating to 435,000 transactions in total for the hour.

In terms of value, shoppers splashed out $120 million so far in their final Christmas Eve gift-buying blitz, as at 1pm - half of this total was processed between 10am and 1pm.

Yesterday's shopping figures were also positive, with a total of $226 million dollars spent across the country through Paymark's network.

Paymark chief executive Simon Tong said that retailers would have welcomed the late rush, but that transactions would taper off in the last few shopping hours of the day.

"It's positive to see that shoppers have come out in force today," he said.

"The network has seen a lot of activity - we're on par with last year but we can expect to see sales slowly dropping off from now as people swap the malls and shops for time with family and friends," said Mr Tong.

- NZPA