Consumers hunt out the bargains

Shoppers continued their Christmas shopping until the last minute in 2008, with over 11.5m transactions processed for its retailer customers on Christmas Eve, according to data from Barclaycard Payment Acceptance. Transactions peaked at 12.25pm on Christmas Eve when 387 card payments were processed per second for Barclaycard's 93,000 retailers across the UK.

The figures from Barclaycard additionally show that across December, there was an increase of 4.7% in the amount of transactions processed compared to the same period the previous year. Shoppers continued to spend on debit and credit cards between Christmas Day and New Year with the volume of transactions increasing 8.8% compared to the same period in December 2007. Although a greater number of transactions were recorded, the average transaction in December 2008 was £47.98, compared to £48.61 in 2007, showing shoppers were hunting out the bargains in the run-up to Christmas.

Commenting on the data, Antony Jenkins, Chief Executive of Barclaycard said: "Shoppers continued buying their Christmas presents right up to Christmas Day, with over eleven and a half million transactions on Christmas Eve alone. We have also seen a significant increase in post-Christmas shopping versus December 2007 as the sales have continued."

The figures also show which sectors benefited from increased sales in December with supermarkets, railway companies and direct sellers, which includes catalogue companies, seeing increases in the value of total transactions compared with the previous year.