Visa Holiday Volume Up 15.7%, as Transactions Peak Christmas Eve

Visa reports the holiday shopping season generated a 15.7% increase in dollar volume on its card products compared to the same time last year, with volume reaching $218.7 billion on all Visa-branded cards in the Nov. 1 to Jan. 2 period. Consumer spending on the company's debit cards grew 26.2%, to $90.6 billion, while credit card volume increased a more modest 6.8% to $110 billion. Spending at Internet sites during the two-month season jumped 33% over the year-ago period, San Francisco-based Visa reports, with e-commerce volume reaching $19.8 billion, or 9% of total card volume. The busiest day by dollar volume was Dec. 23, with more than $4.8 billion in sales flowing through Visa's network. But the peak time for transaction traffic came on Dec. 24, when during a single hour the network processed 5,546 transactions per second, up 8.3% over the peak reached in 2003, which also came on Christmas Eve. That came to 89% of the maximum of 6,200 transactions per second that VisaNet, the company's network, can handle. Visa says it recently upgraded VisaNet to build up its capacity in anticipation of holiday-season traffic loads. The company reports it sustained 100% uptime and on-time performance in clearing and settlement during the period. The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, turned out to be only the 12th busiest volume day of the period, belying long-held notions that it is the busiest for shopping. Volume that day totaled $4.1 billion. The five busiest days all occurred in the week leading up to Christmas.