Edition 17 of the MasterCard Papers series.

The latest payments data recently issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and Statistics New Zealand has produced a number of very interesting insights into the state of the New Zealand economy.

Card Transactions
• May 2009 saw a 2.34% increase in the value of electronic (debit and credit) transactions, up $106.8 million on April to a total of $4.678 billion. The number of electronic transactions grew in May 2009 by 3 million or 3.41% to 91 million. This took the rolling year total to 1.047 billion transactions.
• Annualised growth of credit card spend drops by $171 million to $28.655 billion for the rolling year.

Outstandings
• Outstandings across all cards continued their downward trend in May 2009 with a monthly reduction of $65 million down to $5.175 billion from April’s $5.24 billion.
• Balances on consumer cards fell by $6 million in April 2009, from $4.988 to $4.982 billion.

Credit Limits
• NZ credit card limits grew slightly - by just $5 million or 0.03% to $17.608 billion. This was the first increase since November 2008.
• Utilisation fell by 0.38% to 29.39%.

Keep an eye out for future MasterCard Papers.

Regards,

Stuart McKinlay
Country Manager - MasterCard New Zealand

MasterCard Worldwide | www.mastercard.com.au

RBNZ Data Analysis: Read More Here (pdf)

ENDS