Bouquet still popular choice for Romantics

Bouquet still popular choice for Romantics

Thursday 15 February, 2018

The traditional frenzy amongst florists on Valentine’s Day was evident this year. Payments accepted yesterday by florists through the Paymark network were over fivefold higher than the previous Wednesday (up 429% or $1.1 million), bringing the daily total to $1.4 million. This was also higher than last Valentine’s Day last year, up 7.4%.

And at a time when average transaction sizes are generally declining, the average spend per transaction at florists yesterday was $53.89, up 6.6% on Valentine’s Day 2017.

Other merchants to show a sharp jump in spending yesterday included Jewellers (+82% on the previous Wednesday), Music stores (+56%), Gift stores (+22%) and Restaurant/cafes (+28%). Paymark figures show the extent of spending these merchants but does not show ‘the why‘. However, it is reasonable to presume that romance was behind this extra spending, especially as a similar pattern has occurred on previous Valentine’s Days.

Not as clear cut is a 39% jump in payments to Charities yesterday, or a 31% jump in Marine equipment sales.

Whereas it is unlikely that 28% more payments through Employment Service companies is related to Valentine’s Day. Nor a 15% decline in business through Building and Agriculture supply companies – that was likely due to the weather.

In total, Paymark processed $190 million payments yesterday, which was up 4.9% on the previous Wednesday. As a measure of the current trend in spending, annual underlying spending growth has been 4.6% in the first 14 days of February, slightly lower recent averages.

Full release Paymark__Valentines_Release_Feb_15.pdf

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