Upbeat News from First Data on Average Tickets, Same-Store Sales

Christmas cheer for merchants and transaction processors came a little early this week with the news that both transaction volumes and dollar sales from cards for at least one major processor are finally trending up, yielding a scant but welcome uptick in average tickets. Even more encouraging: the increases came from stores that had been in business at least a year, indicating a possible reversal of a downward trend in same-store sales on cards noted earlier this year. Card transactions across all industries jumped up 8.93% in November compared to the same month in 2008, according to Atlanta-based processor First Data Corp., which compiled data from a number of its processing platforms to measure activity on signature and PIN debit cards as well as credit cards. Along with this increase came a rise in dollar volume of 6.2%, the company says in its latest SpendTrend report. But, while the average ticket dipped 2.5% from November 2008 to November 2009, it increased 1.4% over October, according to First Data, which does not release the figures from which the percentage changes are derived. This result, though small, may indicate that the steady erosion in average tickets over the past year, fueled by the weak economy, may finally be reversing itself. The rise in same-store dollar volume on cards is also significant. This summer, First Annapolis Consulting issued a report showing a 4.9% drop in same-store sales on Visa and MasterCard for the January through May period (Digital Transactions News, July 30). The firm noted that this was the first time such a decline had been seen. While encouraging, the First Data result could be tempered somewhat by the fact that First Annapolis's data came from fully 17 acquirers and applied specifically to small and medium-size merchants. First Data also reports that PIN debit is clearly outdistancing other card types when it comes to growth. PIN debit transactions grew 12.8% in November over November 2008, compared to 5.8% for credit and signature debit combined. Among merchants, so-called value merchants fared the best, with a 15.39% rise in transaction volume over November last year. They were followed by petroleum retailers (11.65%) and quick-service restaurants (11.05%). The worst growth rate was recorded by the “vehicles-servicing” category, at 3%.