Electronic Card Transactions 12 April

The electronic card transactions (ECT) series cover debit, credit, and charge card transactions with New Zealand-based merchants. The series can be used to indicate changes in consumer spending and economic activity.

Key facts

All figures are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise specified.

Values are at the national level and are not adjusted for price changes.

March 2024 month

Changes in the value of electronic card transactions for the March 2024 month (compared with February 2024) were:

• spending in the retail industries decreased 0.7 percent ($45 million)
• spending in the core retail industries decreased 0.6 percent ($36 million).

By retail spending category, movements were:

• fuel, down $7.7 million (1.4 percent)
• apparel, down $7.5 million (2.2 percent)
• consumables, down $6.3 million (0.2 percent)
• durables, down $5.1 million (0.3 percent)
• motor vehicles (excluding fuel), down $4.5 million (2.2 percent).

Note, the seasonally adjusted series are adjusted independently of each other, therefore, the sum of the component categories may differ to the total.

The non-retail (excluding services) category increased by $47 million (2.1 percent) from February 2024. This category includes medical and other health care, travel and tour arrangement, postal and courier delivery, and other non-retail industries.

The services category was down $3.3 million (0.9 percent). This category includes repair and maintenance, and personal care, funeral, and other personal services.

The total value of electronic card spending, including the two non-retail categories (services and other non-retail), increased from February 2024, up $9.9 million (0.1 percent).

Due to the effect of COVID-19 on tourism, we are unable to release seasonally adjusted figures for the hospitality category. As such, we are focusing on the actual hospitality values for this release. We will resume the release of seasonally adjusted figures for the hospitality industry in the upcoming electronic card transactions release.

Spending in the hospitality category increased 0.7 percent ($8.8 million) between March 2023 and March 2024.

In actual terms, cardholders made 168 million transactions across all industries in March 2024, with an average value of $55 per transaction. The total amount spent using electronic cards was $9.2 billion.

March 2024 quarter

Changes in the seasonally adjusted value of retail electronic card transactions for the March 2024 quarter (compared with the December 2023 quarter) were:

• spending in the retail industries increased $27 million (0.1 percent)
• spending in the core retail industries increased $67 million (0.4 percent).

By spending category, the movements were:

• durables, up $53 million (1.1 percent)
• consumables, up $48 million (0.6 percent)
• apparel, down $1.6 million (0.2 percent)
• motor vehicles (excluding fuel), down $6.8 million (1.1 percent)
• fuel, down $28 million (1.7 percent).

The non-retail (excluding services) category was up $4.4 million (0.1 percent) and the services category was down $7.6 million (0.7 percent).

The total value of electronic card spending, including the two non-retail categories (services and other non-retail) was unchanged compared with the December 2023 quarter.

As with the monthly figures above, we are focusing on the actual hospitality values for the March 2024 publication.

Year on year, hospitality was up $134 million (3.5 percent) compared with the March 2023 quarter.

Seasonal adjustment: quality note

COVID-19 related disruptions have introduced unusual patterns to both the monthly and quarterly electronic card transaction series. While many series have started returning to regular seasonal patterns, we advise caution when making inferences from seasonally adjusted data for the period March 2020 to early 2022.

Updates in next electronic card transactions release

As signalled in Electronic card transactions: February 2024, released on 12 March 2024, we intended to implement enhancements to the seasonal adjustment methodology. Due to some delays, we have decided to postpone these updates to the next release scheduled for 14 May 2024.

The main change is to use automatic additive outlier detection to calculate seasonal adjustment.

See:

• Seasonal adjustment and automatic outliers in time series after COVID-19 for information about the process, which Stats NZ has implemented across various releases.
• Update to seasonal adjustment methodology for the Retail Trade Survey for changes in methodology for retail trade.

We will also resume the publication of seasonal adjusted series for the hospitality industry, and trend series for all categories in the electronic card transactions data.

Seasonally adjusted data is revised with each new month or quarter of data. Due to the effects of COVID-19 on spending, seasonally adjusted series have changed more than usual. When we introduce enhancements to the seasonal adjustment methodology in the next release, revisions to the time series may be larger than normal.

More data

Use Infoshare to access the electronic card transactions time series:

Subject category: Economic indicators
Group: Electronic card transactions (ANZSIC06) - ECT

Definitions and metadata

Electronic card transactions data collection methodology - DataInfo+ gives general methodology used to produce electronic card transaction statistics.

Electronic card transactions concepts - DataInfo+ gives definitions of terms used in this release.

Technical enquiries

Yvonne Fakahau
04 931 4600
[email protected]

ISSN 1178-0258

Next release

Electronic card transactions: April 2024 will be released on 14 May 2024.