Visa Reports $257 Billion for ’05 Holiday Season, with a Dec. 23 Peak

In its final holiday-spending report for the season, Visa USA said today retail spending on its cards hit $257 billion for November and December 2005, up 17.5% from the same period in 2004. Visa says e-commerce activity for the holiday-shopping season totaled $26.5 billion, peaking at $624 million on Dec. 1, an increase of 47% over the same day a year earlier. For the final week of the year, Visa says total volume on its cards reached $24.6 billion, up 16.1% over the same week in 2004. Transactions totaled almost 433 million for the week, a 16.8% increase. Volume on consumer debit cards?including both check cards and Interlink cards?was $11.4 billion on 278.5 million transactions, up 23% and 21%, respectively. Barely ahead was consumer credit card volume, at $11.5 billion on 141.1 million transactions, increases of 9% and 8%. E-commerce traffic for the week reached almost 31 million transactions, resulting in $2.5 billion in sales. This represented increases of 24% and 26% over the final week of 2004. Fast-food sales on Visa hit $362 million, up 46.5%, on 30.1 million transactions, a 59% jump. The average quick-serve ticket was $12.01. Separately, Visa USA reported its peak processing day for 2005 was Dec. 23, when its data centers handled 179 million transactions, up 22% from 2004's biggest volume day. Visa says it normally processes about 100 million daily transactions. Its busiest hour also came on Dec. 23, when it processed an average of 6,363 transactions per second, a 14% increase from the load it handled during its 2004 peak hour, which occurred Dec. 24. The bank card network says its volume has increased on average of 20% per year for the past 13 years, a mounting load it says its investments in new technology have allowed it to handle. These investments include a new data center?its first in 15 years?that opened in 2005.