Press Releases
INTERAC® Reveals the Year’s Busiest Shopping Day
Canadians Used their Debit Cards 15.9 Million Times on December 23rd, 2008
December 28, 2008, Toronto (Ontario) – INTERAC® Canada’s national debit service and favourite way to pay revealed today that December 23rd was INTERAC’s busiest shopping day of the year with more than 15.9 million INTERAC transactions.
According to INTERAC, that represents an increase over the 15.6 million transactions reported on December 21st, 2007, last season’s busiest holiday shopping day of the year. INTERAC statistics show that Canadians also power-shopped during the final 2008 pre-holiday period, swiping their cards nearly 40 million times between December 21st and December 23rd.
“Canadians are among the highest users of debit compared to other countries around the world,” said Caroline Hubberstey, Director of Public and Government Affairs at Interac Association. “At the store, online, or at the ABM, your money is always with you – that’s why Canadians choose INTERAC as their preferred method of payment.”
INTERAC Reveals What Canadians Were Buying:Canadians were stocking up on holiday fare at grocery stores on December 23rd, to the tune of $219 million, representing the highest transaction levels across all sectors. Following are the retail sectors where Canadians were using their debit cards on the busiest shopping day of the year.
The biggest re-gifters in the nation? Ontario budgeters were the most likely to re-gift this season (25 per cent), while those in the Quebec/Atlantic region were least likely to re-circulate unwanted gifts (15 per cent).
- Supermarkets: 3,327,706 transactions (a value of more than $219.5 million), representing 20.87% of all transactions;
- Specialty clothing: 2,873,000 transactions (a value of more than $180.6 million), representing 18.02% of all transactions;
- Department Stores: 1,990,852 transactions (a value of more than $121.5 million), representing 12.49% of all transactions;
- Gas stations/Auto: 1,487,997 transactions (a value of more than $64 million), representing 9.33% of all transactions;
- Restaurants/Bars/Fast Food: 1,560,380 transactions (a value of more than $30.8 million), representing 9.79% of all transactions;
- Beer/Liquor/Wine: 1,093,877 transactions (a value of more than $64.9 million), representing 6.86% of all transactions.
Although Ontario and Quebec are the largest provinces, the biggest shoppers can be found in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador with .74 and .73 transactions per capita respectively.
Following is how much shopping the provinces were doing on the busiest shopping day of the year:
- Alberta: .67 transactions per inhabitant (2,336,050 transactions/$134.6 million);
- Nova-Scotia: .67 transactions per inhabitant (624,031 transactions/$31.7 million);
- Newfoundland-Labrador: .73 transactions per inhabitant (368,296 transactions/$19.8 million);
- Prince-Edward Island: .74 transactions per inhabitant (102,517 transactions/$5.2 million);
- New-Brunswick: .61 transactions per inhabitant (459,972 transactions/$23.3 million);
- Manitoba: .56 transactions per inhabitant (667,397 transactions/$35 million);
- BC/N.W.T./Yukon: .54 transactions per inhabitant (2,436,335 transactions/$125.5 million);
- Saskatchewan: .55 transactions per inhabitant (550,690 transactions/$31.2 million);
- Ontario: .47 transactions per inhabitant (6,015,185 transactions/ $330.5 million);
- Quebec: .31 transactions per inhabitant (2,380,692 transactions/$127.7 million).
A recognized world leader in debit card services, Interac Association is responsible for the development and operations of the INTERAC network, a national payment network that allows Canadians to access their money through Automated Banking Machines and point-of-sale terminals across Canada. Interac Association was founded in 1984 and is composed of a diverse membership which includes banks, trust companies, credit unions, caisses populaires, merchants, and technology and payment related companies.
Other INTERAC®-branded and related services include: INTERAC Online, for secure online payments directly from a bank account, INTERAC e-Transfer, for the transfer of money from a bank account to anyone with an email address, and Cross Border Debit, for point-of-sale access at more than 1.5 million U.S. retailers.
