On the rise – Cash withdrawals

Posted 2007-12-13

In order to buy their Christmas goodies and various other festive purchases, consumers use cash, and go to the extent of using their credit cards for cash withdrawals.

In a stark comparison to last month, the first week of December has already seen a 7% increase in regular ATM withdrawals, reports LINK, network operator for cash machines.

LINK futher says, that the last four years, this figure was around 5% or so.

Statistics that were revealed last month from APACS, payments association, stated that during the festive season, a 5% fall in cash spending would be seen. Thus there would be a drop to 18.9 billion pounds from the 19.9 billion in 2006.

An increase in card usage would see a 4% rise compared to last year and thus a total of 53 billion pounds would be spend on festive purchases.

However, it is observed that consumers have restricted the use of credit card, preferring to use cash for their purchases. This is mainly due to the ongoing credit crunch. The overall retail statistics in spending has led us to this conclusion.

MasterCard, a credit card firm, stated that annual retail sales growth rate was reduced to 4% from 4.5%. This was attributed to poor sales in stores in November.

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