Christmas Eve transactions set new record

Christmas Eve transactions set new record

Auckland, 24 December 2015:

Christmas Eve is always the busiest shopping day of the year and 2015 is proving to be no different.

While final sales figures for the day are yet to be collated, Paymark can report that as of 1pm Kiwi consumers had already spent in excess of $147 million through the tills. The busiest time of day has likely passed with 1221pm seeing a peak of 157.46 transactions per second, up slightly from 2014’s peak of 156.13 transactions per second, albeit on a lower dollar amount.

Paymark CEO Mark Rushworth says this represents a new record for the number of transactions per second the Paymark network has ever processed.

“Each year Christmas Eve really gives us a good workout. Throughout the year we typically see 50 to 60 transactions per second and during December we saw that average figure creep up into the 115 – 120 range, but this is a new record for us.”

In terms of dollars spent, Paymark processed $147,772,818.15 from midnight to 1pm on Christmas Eve. At its peak, Paymark handled more than half a million transactions an hour.

This is particularly interesting as Wednesday 23 December was something of a smash hit day as well - beating last year’s Christmas Eve in terms of dollars processed through Paymark’s network. Having two such days in a row says the final figures for the Christmas season will be very strong indeed.

Rushworth thanks the Paymark technology team for their hard work in ensuring the network can cope with demands that are three times higher than the typical load.

“The Paymark team is extremely aware of the problems that would be created if there were any outages on such an important shopping day and we’ve built the Paymark network to be as resilient as possible. Even at these extreme transaction per second figures, our network is still operating well below its maximum capacity, proving we are a world-class example of a payments processing network that is second to none.”

Paymark’s network processes EFTPOS transactions for more than 75% of New Zealand’s retailers with more than a billion transactions being processed each year.

ENDS

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