UK consumers will spend ВЈ53bn over this year’s Christmas period, with nearly a third of purchases made on plastic, it was predicted today. The payments industry’s trade body Apacs said it expected total spending on cards, cash and cheques to be up 4.2% on the figures for last December, when ВЈ50.8bn was paid out by consumers. This year, ВЈ34.1bn of spending is expected to be put on plastic - up 9.9% on the same period last year. This will account for 64.3% of the predicted total.
The bulk of plastic spending will be done on debit cards, which have increased in popularity among shoppers throughout the year. Apacs said it expected debit card expenditure to reach ВЈ22.4bn in December, a 14.3% increase on figures for the same period last year. Conversely, credit card spending has been weak for some time, and Apacs said it expected there to be little increase on last December’s figure of ВЈ11.4bn.
Christmas spending on credit cards has remained around the same level since December 2004. Online boom One area where Apacs expects to see an increase in credit card use is online, where it has predicted spending in all forms will reach ВЈ5.6bn this December, accounting for more than 10% of the overall total.
Credit card spending online is expected to account for ВЈ3.6bn of this - a 50% jump - while online purchases made using debit cards are expected to reach ВЈ2bn, up 67% on last December’s figure. Apacs’ spokeswoman Sandra Quinn said: “Whether buying the turkey or stocking fillers, we’re most likely to be using our debit card to pay for them this Christmas, continuing the ongoing trend of pulling out the debit card in preference to our credit cards, cash or cheques.