Visa Says Gas-Price Relief Is Helping Drive Pre-Holiday Spending

Pre-holiday spending volume on Visa cards continued to build in the week through Sunday, with overall transactions increasing 18.8%, to 405.6 million ($22.7 billion in dollar volume), over the same week a year ago. Activity on the Internet and in fast-food chains, two closely watched emerging spending categories, increased 22.5% and 76.7% respectively. E-commerce volume reached 30.5 million transactions ($2.53 billion), while quick-service payments hit 39.3 million ($415 million). That's according to the latest SpendTrak report from Visa USA, which is releasing weekly statistics on activity on its cards through the year-end holiday season. Just days ahead of Black Friday, traditionally thought to be the busiest shopping day of the year, transactions on Visa check cards, the company's signature-debit product, continued to outpace traffic on its credit cards. Consumer-initiated debit card volume jumped 27.9%, to 242.3 transactions, while credit cards racked up 140 million payments, up 5%. But because average credit card tickets, at $79.23, are more than double average payments on debit cards, dollar volume on debit was $8.35 billion for the week, while credit volume was $11.1 billion. Wayne Best, in-house economist at Visa, said in a statement that the bank card network “maintains an optimistic outlook for the holiday shopping season.” He credits in particular a recent drop in pump prices, which has allowed consumers to spend money elsewhere that they otherwise would have spent on gasoline. For the record, Visa notes Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is historically not the busiest day of the year on its cards. That distinction, it says, belongs to the weekend before Christmas. However, the network says it expects shoppers this Friday to generate the heaviest daily volume of the year from retailers.